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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27247834">the feeling remains inside</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakeThisWaltz/pseuds/TakeThisWaltz'>TakeThisWaltz</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>buy the ticket, take the ride [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Recreational Drug Use, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, college age, richie does acid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:54:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,760</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27247834</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakeThisWaltz/pseuds/TakeThisWaltz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"He knows he’s going to do it from the second she pulls it out. Acid has enticed him since he got to college and learned that a trip could mean many things. But this is the first time he's seen it with his own eyes, been offered it even."</p><p>Richie takes a trip and remembers</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>buy the ticket, take the ride [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2111025</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. does it worry you to be alone?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired by the eerie feeling of seeing faces in a crowd you think you recognize.</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Chapter title from With a Little Help From My Friends</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Richie has been hanging out with his new college friends for about a month when Laurie suggests they all drop acid. </p><p>The rest of the group have all known each other since freshman year but Richie didn’t meet any of them until this fall. He'd kept making 'Hrumph’ noises in imitation of the professor on their first day of humanities lecture, and Laurie was the only one who’d laughed. She’d caught up to Richie after class and asked if he wanted to go smoke weed in her car. He was worried she might have been hitting on him, but she mentioned her boyfriend Griffin pretty early on. Laurie is just looking for someone to keep her entertained, make her laugh. She's a California native, a wayward spirit with long, straight blonde hair who seems to be perpetually wearing sandals. They’d started getting high after class together, which morphed into getting high with all her other friends. It's a collection of stoners and weirdos, people who like goofing around and doing wacky shit. Richie vibes with them, likes hanging out with them. He doesn't feel particularly close to any one of them but they’re good people to have around. He likes Laurie the most. She laughs at what he says even when he knows she doesn’t understand it, and even as he wishes for a little more genuineness he appreciates the rush it gives him. </p><p>They're all smoking in Laurie's room, draped over the bed or nestled up on cushions on the floor. Her apartment became the hangout spot since she moved in at the beginning of the school year. She’s made it into some kind of den, a representation of her combined persona of unaffected chiller and spiritual expert. She always has incense going; she says it covers the smell, but really it just makes the room smell like extra heady weed. She’d draped a shawl over a lamp that casts everything in a violet light, sending out strange and vibrant shadows. </p><p>“I’ve got a surprise for all of you,” she says, sitting cross legged on the couch.</p><p>“Did you get your nips pierced?” Richie says. “If so, I don’t wanna see for another month, because I’ve heard that shit gets inflamed.”</p><p>“No, metal doesn’t suit my aura,” she says. “This is something better.”</p><p>She reaches into her bedside drawer and pulls out a little envelope. “Got some Lucy here for you,” she says.</p><p>“Woah, right on,” says their friend Nathan.   </p><p>Richie doesn’t know what that is for a second, but his range of drug related slang catches up to him. Lucy means Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which means LSD.</p><p>“My cousin shipped it to me straight from LA,” she says. “Like, right between the pages of a book so the feds wouldn’t find it.”</p><p>She opens the envelope and shows them all in the dim light. “There’s an alien head on it,” she says. “See, here, you can see the outline of his eyeball.”</p><p>Richie peers closer but all he sees is green shading. He’s a little disappointed in this lack of trippiness; he imagined a tab with a little Grateful Dead bear on it or something.</p><p>“It's good shit,” Laurie says. “Came straight out of a lab from some guys who knew Leary.” Richie doesn’t know who that is, and he doesn’t want to ask.</p><p>He knows he’s going to do it from the second she pulls it out. Acid has enticed him since he got to college and learned that a trip could mean many things. But this is the first time he's seen it with his own eyes, been offered it even. Richie has no frame of reference for what good or bad acid is, but he trusts Laurie, even if he’s not sure he trusts her Californian cousin. But he’s always been reckless though, he can hardly break the pattern now. He wants to take that plunge, see what it feels like. </p><p>They make a plan, sprawled across Laurie’s room, for the perfect trip they're going to take. They need to do it soon, before the Chicago climate turns on them. As a Chicago resident prior to his matriculation at Northwestern, Richie doesn't have high hopes, but he's able to shrug off the cold pretty well due to years of underdressing for the weather. Fall break is coming up, and even though some of them were leaving to go home they all had the first Saturday free. They agree it sounds like a sick idea, and wonder what the weather will be like. Richie isn’t sure how much of it is just high talk, plans that would fall through in the morning light, but he wants to take the next steps. </p><p>Laurie brings it up again the next time they’re all hanging out so he knows she’s for real. “We can go to Gilson Park,” she says. “It’s even better than we’re doing it a little later in the year, the park won’t be so full of squares.” The other members of their group agree, and Richie knows they’re getting ready for lift off.</p><p>Laurie is in full control of this trip. She’s come up with an agenda for all of them because she says they’ll lose all rational powers of thought when they’re high. They’re going to go to the park and drop in the afternoon, hang out there till the sun goes down, and walk back to Laurie’s room to listen to Jefferson Airplane until they pass out. Laurie has already tripped twice back in California so she’s the expert, and she says Jefferson Airplane has the best vibrations.</p><p>That Saturday is pleasant, thank god. Richie bundles up only minimally, hoping he’ll be able to shed his jacket outside. He meets up with Nathan on the way. Nathan’s into plants; the one time Richie went to his place it was like stepping into a steam room. They’ve never had much to talk about, but Richie can't say there’s anything wrong with him. Both he and Nathan live off campus, in the block of apartments a couple of blocks from campus predominantly populated by Northwestern students. It’s shitty, but Richie doesn’t bother his roommates and they don’t bother him. </p><p>He and Nathan walk together to the park, chatting idly about what they’re going to do with their fall breaks after this. “I’m going back to Maryland,” Nathan says. “There’s a girl back there who I’m trying to make things work with, you know?”</p><p>“Yeah, gotta put in the time to get the pussy,” says Richie, even though he doesn’t know.</p><p>He’s staying in Chicago for fall break, he tells Nathan. “My family lives here,” he says. “I’ll probably go home and do my laundry but I don’t need them on my ass about how I’m not working on papers.”</p><p>“Yeah, you’re a native Chicagoan, right?” Nathan asks. </p><p>“No, I’m from somewhere else originally,” Richie responds. He considers for a second. “Maine?” he says.</p><p>Nathan looks at him. “You don’t know?”</p><p>“Course I know, I just don’t like to think about it because it’s such a shitty place,” he says with more confidence than he feels.</p><p>Thankfully Nathan doesn’t press for more information because Richie’s not sure he could provide it. </p><p>It’s about a half an hour walk to the park, and they cut straight through the center of campus to make the walk shorter. There are students milling around the various quads, tossing hacky sacks and smoking cigarettes. Richie already had a cigarette problem before he got to college, and the environment he’d chosen to place himself in doesn’t help. He tries not to buy packs but he knows pretty soon his friends are going to get tired of him being a bum.</p><p>They reach the park and navigate to the spot Laurie instructed they meet at. There’s a little circle of their friends spread out on a blanket when they arrive. They’re all people who Richie started hanging out with at the beginning of this year. His first year at school he hadn't felt like he found his group. He liked his roommate and some of the people he went to parties and drank with but he hadn’t met anyone who he felt like he clicked with, that he could let the mask slip down in front of even a tiny bit. He still hasn’t totally felt that with this group; they laugh at his jokes and they’re down to have a good time but he can’t think of a single one of them he would tell a secret to. It’s only been a month though; those types of bonds don’t form immediately. “Hi-ho, fellow celestial adventures,” he says, and finds room in the circle. </p><p>Once everyone has arrived Laurie brings out the tabs. She distributes them into their waiting palms like communion. They all put them on their tongues, and Laurie instructs them to hold it in their mouths for as long as possible. The paper loses its substance, becoming gummier and gummier on Richie’s tongue, until he gets tired of fiddling with it and swallows it.</p><p>Things are normal for the first hour. They sit and they talk about what they’re going to do with their breaks, about the latest Green Day album. But then Richie points over his shoulder and starts to giggle and says “Oh my god, does anybody else see that play they’re performing?” When they all look over, they see a mother trying to chase down her child, calling out “Susie, your new shoes are going to get all muddy!” </p><p>“It’s like fucking Plato’s cave,” says Richie. “The little girl is running out of the cave and her mom is trying to stop her so she can trap her back in a world of illusion. It’s all a lie little girl!” he yells. “Get out before they control your brain!” They all burst out laughing in a way that starts in Richie’s chest and continues in a way he can’t control, laughing so hard he forgets what’s funny. They get more and more giggly, as people just start saying every thought that comes to mind.</p><p>“Can John understand Garfield?” Richie asks. “Like, it’s thought bubbles, not word bubbles. And Garfield’s not a talking cat. So are they telepathic? Can John read cats’ minds?” 	</p><p>Richie didn’t know colors could be so bright. All of nature is a jewel, shimmering with hidden tones that the sunlight coaxes out. He looks up at the branch coverage above him and it’s a mix of red and yellow and some brown, and the brown looks dead but somehow the rest looks alive still, even though he knows it’s not getting nutrients anymore. He wants to feel the texture of the leaves between his fingers and so he does, finding one on the ground and rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. It feels slippery, and a little cold, and Richie wonders if he’s able to suck energy from it through the membrane of his skin. </p><p>They’re all just saying the dumbest shit, tripping over the word ‘meniscus’ and losing their trains of thought. Once he’s started talking he can’t stop. He feels like his thoughts are just tumbling out of his mouth even faster than usual, losing coherence as he goes on. He wants to be heard, to connect, to be understood. “Generations are totally fake, you know?” he says, pausing to catch a breath. “Because really-”</p><p>“Man, can’t you ever give it a rest?” Laurie says. Someone else laughs.</p><p>Suddenly Richie feels like he’s been stoppered up. All of the voices in his head have gone silent until all he can zero in on is that one moment. He thinks about every time Laurie laughed at one of his jokes. He thought she found him funny. Is it all fake? Is her laughter just a mask to hide her annoyance and contempt? Because of course she’s annoyed at Richie and his dumb jokes. Who wouldn’t be?</p><p>The rest of the group has moved on, because it doesn’t matter, their brains can’t process anything rationally right now anyway. “And what if we had trunks?” Griffin is saying. “You know, like elephants have trunks. Would we fight with our trunks? Would people inflict violence with their trunks?”</p><p>“How would a trunk make a fist?” someone else asks. “You’ve gotta curl it around, like-” and he tries to wrap his arm in on himself, getting distracted until he contorts his whole body into a ball. He looks out at them from the position he curled himself into. “How did I get so small?” he says plaintively, and everyone bursts out laughing. Richie doesn’t join them. He doesn’t know why that was funny.</p><p>He looks at the guy. His name is  . . . Lewis? Or Connor? Richie doesn’t know. Richie should know. These are his friends, right? </p><p>He looks around at the circle. There’s Alana, who wants to be a psychologist and has a cat. She’s . . . nice? And then there’s Griffin, who skateboards and likes Miller High Life, and that’s all Richie knows about him. He skims from person to person and he realizes that at most he can come up with is a single fact, a one word adjective for each of them. Not even good adjectives. The generic ones. Funny, nice, smart; just single solitary words that don’t mean anything. Two dimensional. People who you know should have layers, texture, defining quirks and characteristics.</p><p>He doesn’t believe in stuff like cosmic energy, but he knows acid is supposed to make you feel in touch with the greater secrets of the universe. You’re supposed to feel like your psyches are connected and shit. But he doesn’t feel connected. He feels a growing gap between himself and the people he’s around, like the more he thinks about them the blurrier they become. These are his friends, the people who understand him. But none of them even know him, let alone understand him. </p><p>Laurie’s holding court but he doesn’t particularly want to listen to what she’s saying. His voices are coming back to his head slowly, little stray thoughts popping up before either dissipating or winding down different paths. He lies back and looks up at the clouds. They keep undulating above him, drifting by in little puffs of white. He can see hints of green, pink, blue as the different layers converge. There’s a rolling rhythm to them, a pattern even if he can’t understand it. He strains his eyes trying, looking for how the waves of the cloud move. He squints. If he wants to, he can make shapes appear in the cloud, birds that look like they’re taking flight and cats curled up into balls. </p><p>Laurie’s voice fills in from the background. “Because that’s all there is, right? There’s the life force, and we all share the life force. We’re all connected by the energy that flows through us.”</p><p>Richie thinks life force is bullshit, even in his rapidly fracturing mindset. He thinks most of what Laurie says is bullshit. It’s all bullshit.</p><p>He keeps looking at the clouds. He sees a turtle forming, its back humping out of a cloud bank. It’s flying above him, moving slowly. He looks up and sees the pattern of a shell, colors blending over each other in this cloud’s protective outer layer. The turtle is drifting slowly, luxuriously, as if it has all the time in the world. ‘These aren’t my real friends,’ he thinks, the thought coming to his mind without even needing to take the effort to form it.</p><p>The turtle in the sky opens its eye. Richie sees a hole in the break in the clouds, a tiny spot through which he can see galaxies spiraling down in an infinity of stars. The cosmos is looking at him, staring directly at him.</p><p><i>“These are not your real friends,”</i> he hears, and it’s coming from everywhere at once, every direction, even the ground, shaking through the earth till he feels the words in his bones. He blinks and when he opens his eye the turtle is gone, just another one of the endlessly churning clouds. </p><p>He sits up straight. “Did you guys hear that?” he says a little wildly. He knows he’s tripping, he knows he’s hallucinating, but that voice felt so resonant, so real, that he can’t imagine anyone else here hadn’t felt it.</p><p>Laurie starts to giggle. “Oh man, you’re tripping hard,” she says. “When the universe starts talking to you, that’s when you know the shit is good.”</p><p>He wants to make a joke, laugh it off, talk about how the angels told him the language of trees or something and move past it. But the voice is echoing in his head, drowning out every other thought. </p><p>Almost unconsciously Richie pulls himself up into a standing position. He feels lighter than he’s used to, like when he stood up he could have accidentally shot himself into space. “I have to go home,” he says. But he’s not really going home. He thinks of his room in his apartment, his bedroom in his parents house. Those are the places he lives. But he doesn’t think of them as home. Where is home? Where is he trying to go?</p><p>They all look up at him, confusion on their faces. “But . . . why?” someone says, like the idea of leaving is unfathomable, a truly ludicrous thing someone would suggest. “The trip is just beginning.”</p><p>“I just gotta-I gotta take a shit,” he blurts out. “Real blocked up.” Everyone makes a disgusted face, as if the idea of doing such an action right now horrifies them. It horrifies Richie too, frankly, but he just needs to get out of there. So he gives an awkward, overly grand wave goodbye, and turns to go.</p><p>“We might not be here when you come back,” Laurie calls out, and he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t care if they’re still there because he’s not coming back.</p><p>He walks through the park like he’s in a dream. He doesn’t know how his legs are moving; it almost feels like he’s gliding through lukewarm air. The blanket had been a little oasis and now that he’s moving throughout the world again he’s found the environment stranger than he left it. He sees somebody arching a frisbee and it leaves a trail of color in the air, a pulsing orange blur he can chase with his finger. He hears a child crying, wailing and wailing, and he wants it to go away, wants it to stop, can’t be adjacent to so much raw pain.</p><p>He had thought getting out of there would make him feel better, but he hadn’t realized how comforting it was just being around other people’s energy. Nothing about being around those people made him feel connected or understood. But he thinks of the primal pack mentality, to stay together against the darkness. Stray dogs don’t need to like each other, they just need to make sure nothing larger attacks them. Now he’s by himself, looking at the world with altered eyes in a sea full of people who can’t understand, not even a little. He can’t keep out the thoughts that press in on him as he tries to relax into the weak warmth of the sun, the thoughts he thought he could escape by leaving the group behind. The sun goes behind a cloud, and there’s menace in the air. He feels like he’s standing on the edge of a yawning crevasse of aloneness, and with one step in the wrong direction he would hurtle himself downwards. He’d felt just as adrift when he was with his friends, but now he can’t ignore it. It's terrifying. It’s constant, always there, growing and gnawing inside him. He fills it up with being around people all the time, but that doesn’t make those people his friends.</p><p>But what the fuck are friends if those guys aren’t his friends? Friends are the people you hang out with, make jokes with. He likes their company just fine and they like being around him. What’s wrong with that? If those aren’t real friends he’s never had real friends.</p><p>He feels the crack in himself widen when he thinks that. Maybe he’s never had real friends. He thought that’s just what friendship was, shooting the shit and getting fucked up. People to pass the time with, to try jokes out on. He’s never cried in front of a friend, never told them about the wrong at the root of him because why the fuck would he put himself on the line like that? But maybe he’s doing it wrong. Maybe there’s something wrong with him, an additional wrong on top of all the other wrong. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t mean anything when his jokes land, why he feels hollow when they laugh with him.</p><p>Is this what acid is supposed to feel like? He feels like shit. He doesn’t want to think about his authentic relationship with human connectivity, he wants to get high out of his mind and look at colors until they melt into swirls of ice cream. Instead he feels trapped in an endless loop of thoughts, pulling him down deeper and deeper.</p><p>He needs a cigarette. He needs it more than anything he’s ever needed in his life, needs to feel the smoke pull into his lungs and fill him up. This is a terrible time to rip off the seal and buy his first pack of the school year but he’s going to die if he doesn’t have a cigarette.</p><p>He veers slightly off his route to make a pit stop at the convenience store. He feels like he’s on a quest, that acquiring this item of power will have a magical effect on him. He’ll have accomplished a goal, even though he’s following a destructive impulse.</p><p>He balks when he sees the squat building. He doesn’t want to step out of the sunlight into that fluorescent lighting, feel the trapped air on his skin. And he’ll know, he thinks wildly. The guy behind the counter will know he’s tripping, he’ll take one look into his eyes and see his pupils and call the cops and then Richie will have to sprint out of this convenience store and he doesn’t know if he’s capable of running right now. But he needs a cigarette. He set the task for himself and he can’t fail at it. </p><p>He pushes open the door and overthinks whether or not to greet the guy. He doesn’t because he decides it’s better to come off as rude rather than odd. He ignores the snacks; the idea of putting any solid into his body right now is nauseating. Instead he heads straight to the counter. He feels a little like he’s entered a cave, that he’s about to do some illicit deal deep underground. He tells himself to keep it cool, practicing the pronunciation of marlboro in his head before he just settles on marbs. He’s going to ask for one pack of red marbs and get out of there. </p><p>When he gets to the counter he says, “The red.”</p><p>“The red what?” he says, and Richie realizes he fucked up.</p><p>“The red cigarettes,” he says. “The red marbs.”</p><p>The guy gives him a look but goes to pull the cigarettes out. Richie fumbles in his wallet for cash, seemingly unable to control his hands like a normal person. </p><p>The man rings him up. As he’s pulling out his change Richie says, “I shouldn’t smoke because my friend has asthma. I mean, not actually, but the smoke still bugs him.” The cashier grunts, clearly not caring, but Richie’s still processing what just came out of his mouth. </p><p>What the fuck. None of his friends have asthma. He’s not even sure he’s ever met anyone who has asthma. But there’s an image of an inhaler in his head, red plastic with a little mouth hole almost like you were blowing into a kazoo, and he knows if you push down the plunger on the top it will release a cloud of tiny molecules that fills your lungs, coating the little brionchioles until they become calm and less inflamed, moisture absorbing through your tiniest cells. He’s pushed the top on one down before, he knows he has even though he has no memory of it. He knows what type of resistance it has against the pressure of a hand on top of it, how the metal plunger feels underneath his fingers. But he has no idea how he knows that, when in the past he’s performed that action, and who for. </p><p>When the cashier hands him back his change he just shoves it into his pocket, confident he cannot handle a wallet right now. He swipes his cigarettes from the counter and mumbles something to the guy.</p><p>He lights up as soon as he gets out of the store, scrabbling at the plastic before he just tears away at it in his haste to grab a cigarette. The smoke is blue, purple, grey, and it's floating up in these little spirals that dissipate until they're just part of the rest of the air. It’s going inside of his lungs and instead of healing them like the inhaler does he’s making them dirty, coating the inside of his chest cavity with grime. But it feels heavenly, the gentle glide of smoke down his throat, the way he can feel the cylinder burn down when he inhales. The ember is glowing, pulsing with orange as it eats up the paper.</p><p>It’s hard to walk and smoke at the same time right now so he goes slowly, looking at the landscape. He’s passing through neighborhoods of suburban households and he thinks about the families contained within each of them, parents and babies and teenagers. His parents had a house just like these and it had never felt like his, outside of the fact he didn’t own it or choose it. He wonders if the people who live inside these houses feel at home, if the couples really love each other, if the children who live inside are lonely.</p><p>The thought of the crowds on campus makes him nervous but it’s the fastest way to his apartment and he just wants to make it back, wants to sit in the backyard and smoke cigarette after cigarette until the nicotine envelopes his brain and he can't think. So he heads toward the sprawl of Northwestern.</p><p>When he gets inside he realizes it was a mistake. People are moving too fast, and the snippets of conversion he hears send him down weird thought paths, people talking about classes like they matter and their vacation plans like they’re actually going somewhere. He throws down his cigarette and concentrates on moving as fast as possible. But he can’t somehow, can’t get his legs to go faster than a leisurely stroll as he gets distracted by the faces of people going by, the lines and curves of their noses. He’s terrified of coming off as creepy but he can’t stop, can’t stop honing in on facial expressions like he’ll know what they’re thinking if he looks long enough.</p><p>He’s almost halfway through when he sees her, he sees a flash of bright red hair, and stops in the middle of the sidewalk. The girl has her back to him, and her hair is cut a little past her chin and softly curling, showing her shoulders. He knows here, knows her so deeply that he can taste it in the back of his throat. He wants to go up to her and ask who she is, what her name is, where she came from, get her to tell him where he recognizes her from. But she turns around to greet someone else and he sees her face and he doesn’t know her, she just looks like someone he knows from behind. He keeps moving.</p><p>But why did he recognize her? He’s not friends with anyone with red hair. Some people he’s had classes with maybe, but no one who would strike him with a deep sense of familiarity. He’s spooked by the closeness he felt to a person he doesn’t know, the longing to go over and throw his arms around her. But it must just be some girl from intro psych, or someone who looks like a famous actress. She looked like Molly Ringwald, that’s it. That feels right.</p><p>He catches a glimpse of someone else and he knows better than to stop this time. He sees a round face, cheeks pink. He wants to yell out “Haystack,” not just hey, instead some forgotten inside joke, and he doesn’t understand what it means. He blinks and he knows he doesn’t know that person, hasn’t ever seen him before in his life. </p><p>He’s tripping. He’s tripping hard, and maybe he should have asked Laurie what tripping felt like before he took acid, if you would make up faces in your head. But is the brain even capable of doing that? Don’t you only see the faces of people you’ve met before in your dreams because your mind is incapable of conjuring up unique bone structures, the eye color of made up faces?</p><p>As he moves through campus he keeps seeing people he thinks he recognizes. A pale boy with dirty blonde curls, a black man with an easy smile, someone wearing a flannel shirt he would swear he’s seen before. He’s churning through his head every person he’s ever met, ever interacted with. It’s likely they’re just random people from parties and classes. Maybe people from high school? People from his hometown. He strains to remember his childhood. There’s nothing there, just a blank fog. Shouldn’t he remember more?</p><p>Then he sees him. A face with big eyes, a boy shorter than Richie. Richie feels a jolt go through him, like a pulse of energy hit his chest and traveled through his whole body. The boy’s laughing in profile at something one of the people he’s standing with is saying, and Richie knows that laugh, knows how the corners of his mouth move. He’s pulled that laugh out of him, and he wants to run over and do it again, make him laugh even harder. But then Richie looks closer and sees that his nose is all wrong, too big, and his hairline is receding and there’s just something not right. Even though Richie has no idea who the fuck he’s seeing. He was so close to the sensation of rightness, completeness, but looking at the boy’s face again he wonders how he ever could have thought he knew him in the first place. He shakes it off as best he can, and keeps moving towards the edge of campus.  </p><p>He’s almost out to the street when he sees a white facing grinning at him. It’s a clown with big teeth and yellow eyes, a too wide smile spreading across a painted face. Richie wants to throw up. He wants to run away as far as possible and never see that grinning face again because that face means death and terror and madness. He hears the air rush away from his ears, like he’s falling forward faster and faster and can’t stop himself.</p><p>But then the sun shifts from behind a cloud and he sees it’s just a theater girl with her face painted white, red lipstick smeared wide across her face. What would a clown be doing on a college campus? He’s just hallucinating, riding the wave. He still feels nauseous, what he realizes is adrenaline pumping through his system. The adrenaline apparently doesn’t mix well with the acid because he feels like he can’t see, like there’s something crawling up his throat and choking him. He remembers screaming, clutching onto someone desperately. He was terrified, scared for himself and for someone else.</p><p>He doesn’t know how he makes it back to his apartment. The landscape is a blur, every step he takes weighing down on his feet as he feels the utter reality of gravity.</p><p>He gets inside and just stands there for a moment. It feels completely unfamiliar, grey velvet couch they’d picked up from the street, television with the Super Nintendo hooked up to it. He can hear the hum of all the machinery and the electricity, see the coronas around the lights sending little spikes into the room.</p><p>He can’t be inside. The walls are closing in around him, he can’t breathe right. So he goes out of the sliding glass door in the kitchen to his backyard. There’s a folding chair out there with a table holding an ashtray sitting next to it, and Richie settles himself down. His hands shake as he pulls out a cigarette, taking a couple of tries to light it.</p><p>He thinks about the clown he thought he saw. He’s always hated clowns, avoiding them at the rare opportunities he was around them. But this was something more, something sinister in a different way than humans painting their faces and making silly jokes. Something very wrong had happened to him once. He hopes it’s just all of the McDonalds he’s eaten this past semester coming back to haunt him, but that doesn't explain the creeping dead that had settled over him.</p><p>But all of the other faces made him feel good. They felt safe, and he’d felt these surges of deep affection for them he hasn’t really felt for any of his friends. If the clown was real, as terrifying as that may be, then so were they, and so things couldn’t be all bad. If any of this was real at all. He was probably just recognizing people he’d had classes with or seen at parties. But it has felt like more than that. He’d felt this sense of rightness as he passed by those people he didn't fully recognize. Maybe that was the connection he’d been looking for on acid, that he was missing with his friends. But why would he feel that with strangers? He pulls hard on his cigarette, feeling the smoke go in and out, in and out. </p><p>He’s still shaking off what he saw on campus, but knows he’s safe here. Whatever he might have seen, it can’t touch him here. He feels a sense of peace settle over him. There’s no one around him to make him overthink his behavior, no external forces to question and analyze. He completed his tasks, he acquired cigarettes, and he made it to his backyard. Even though he knows this doesn’t count as real nature there’s something serene about watching the trees rustle gently with the wind, leaves moving in ripples he can trace. The air is gentle where it touches his face. No one is looking at him or judging him. He doesn’t have to overthink his posture, whether he’s slouching or putting his hands in his pockets in a weird way. He’s so sick of worrying what other people think about him. If he’s funny, if he’s cool, if he’s someone you call up when you want to do something really crazy; the Richie he presents to the world. And he can fill that role, be the one to push things to the limit and distract everyone around him from whatever shitty situation they may be in.</p><p>But he’s still empty. All he’s made of is joke after joke, a setup and punchline all in one with no person at the center of it. He doesn’t know what his own voice sounds like, not only because of that weird phenomena where you never hear yourself as others hear you, but because he doesn’t know who he sounds like when he’s being himself. There’s someone he used it for, he knows. Someone with whom he’d let the real voice slip.</p><p>He’s pulling on his cigarette when a memory hits him in the chest. He remembers his first cigarette. Not in its entirety, but can pull pieces together. There’s water, and blue sky, and there’s a pale hand holding out a slim cylinder. He takes a puff and hacks it down, coughing. He makes a joke about starting a training regimen, assigning himself cigarettes like a drill sergeant would assign pushups, slipping into an authoritative voice, and keeps pulling it. Whoever gave him the cigarette laughs. She laughs and it’s bright and clear and makes something release inside Richie’s chest. </p><p>The sun is so warm on his limbs. He looks down and he can see his blue veins through his skin. When he touches his skin it doesn’t feel like his, just an outer coating on his body. He stretches his hands out and looks at the backs of them, tracing the lines of his knuckles. He clenches his hands into fists, watching the way his skin stretches over the bone. The skin is purple, blue, melting into strange swirls, shapes by the tiny lines on his hands. The tighter he clenches the more he can feel the bones push, like they can break on through to the other side. He releases them, seeing his fingers stretch out. Then he flips them over. He has this idea that he can read his own palm, that if he stares hard enough it will give him the secrets of what his life means. His life line, his love line, where they converge and where they stop.</p><p>But when he runs his finger down his left palm he feels something hard and ridged. He looks down. There’s a thick white scar that cuts down the middle of his palm. How did he get it? It looks like it hurt, went deep.</p><p>He remembers the pain. It’s glass. It’s a piece of broken glass, and it cuts through his skin until blood drips through his fingers. He feels someone else’s warm blood on his other hand because he’s clasping it, holding it loosely so it doesn’t hurt but wanting to hold on tightly. This scar is an important scar. It means something but Richie has no idea what.  </p><p>He stays out in the backyard for hours. More and more memories come back to him, even though he can never make the other figures in them fully materialize. He just knows they’re there, can feel their outlines and vague colors and the feelings they create in him. He’s biking down the street, hair whipping fast through his hair. He’s jumping over the edge of a cliff, and the water’s cold when he lands but it feels good, washing away the grime he can’t help but accumulate. </p><p>And then he’s in a house and there’s something terribly wrong. There’s a pool of black, viscous liquid flowing towards him and he needs to escape and there’s nowhere to go. There’s someone he trusts to pull him out, to lead him out of there, but in that moment he’s so terrified he’s frozen.</p><p>He hopes that’s not a real memory, that it’s something his mind made up to spook him, to turn what’s been relatively a pleasant trip of unearthed recollections after he got over the hump into something that sends him into a dark place. He’s heard about bad trips, people going insane over what they’ve seen. He doesn’t want to think about a dark, creepy house where he can just tell terrible things have happened. Maybe happened to him. </p><p>He doesn’t know if he can trust his brain or not. He should’ve done more research on acid, because instead of feeling like his reality is altered, he feels like he’s accessing another part of himself, peeling back away the layers until the real Richie is standing there.</p><p>He hears voices drifting over from the sidewalk. They sound amplified, echoey. He closes his eyes and he can feel the vibrations they make as they touch his skin. He pulls out another cigarette and lights it. </p><p>“Tastes good like a cigarette should,” he says to no one, and giggles. Once he’s started talking he can’t stop, riffing on his own bit. “People who smoke are 15-30 times more likely to get lung cancer, Richie,” he says in a mocking voice, and frowns. How the fuck does he know that? And who is he imitating? He really should write down every person he lifts a voice from. </p><p>It's getting darker, sky morphing into a dusky blue, so he goes inside. Neither of his roommates are there, having left for their respective homes. He’s hungry but he doesn’t want to eat, doesn’t want to put anything in his body. He rifles around the fridge anyway. He finds a bottle of orange juice and pours himself a glass. It tastes sour and sweet at the same time going down his throat, too thick but also delicious. He drinks it slowly, not able to take more than a little bit on his tongue at once.</p><p>He wanders back towards his room. Once inside, he feels like he’s cocooned in a safe cave. He has his band posters on his wall, his John Belushi with the shirt that says ‘College’ on it hanging above his headboard. He collapses on his bed and just stares at his ceiling for a while. It dissolves into soft little swirls. He plays this game where he closes his eyes, sees visions behind his eyelids, and then opens his eyes, looking at the vastly different patterns of the ceiling.</p><p>Eventually he gets bored. There's an itching under his skin reminding him that he’s still high, and his mindset is still altered. So he hops off the bed and goes rifling through his tape collection. Music is supposed to be awesome on acid, truly sublime, and he wants to experience it.</p><p>He looks through his tape deck. It’s a mix of stuff he brought from high school and things he acquired in college. Some of them are homemade mixtapes for parties and chilling, some with cryptic names inscribed on them that Richie no longer understands.</p><p>He finds a copy of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ and crows triumphantly. This is supposed to be the original trippy shit, just when people were still getting into psychedelics. He pops it in and leans back on the bed.</p><p>The first song starts out well enough. He gets drawn into the shrieking guitars and the nonsensical narrative, conducting a little orchestra with his hands. He loves music. He loves being alive and feeling his heart in his chest. Maybe he doesn’t feel like this all the time but he wants to hang on as long as possible. </p><p>It’s the second song that gets him. It starts out more softly, gentle tapping of the drums. He’s vibing with it okay, following along with the clear words. Then it launches into the chorus.</p><p>
  <i>“I get by with a little help from my friends, I get high with a little help from my friends”</i>
</p><p> He’d gotten high with his friends, but did they help him get by? He’s getting by, he’s definitely getting by, but he feels so alone sometimes that he doesn’t have the words to express it, and he always has the words. So instead of addressing what’s at the heart of him he says inane shit to distract himself and others. </p><p> <i>“Are you sad because you're on your own?”</i> </p><p>Is he? He surrounds himself with people but they don’t mean anything to him. He’s not sad, though. He doesn’t allow himself the time to be sad, filling his head up with thoughts about anything else when those emotions intrude. But he can’t stop now. The floodgates have been opened and he wonders what it would be like to feel a sense of rightness in the world.</p><p>
  <i>“I just need someone to love”</i>
</p><p>Richie gets up and turns the tape off. He doesn’t need anybody. He’s never needed anybody, always been maning this ship on his own, because he can’t imagine letting someone else aboard.</p><p>He pulls out a copy of ‘Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ and pops it in. He’s loved Bowie for as long as he can remember, his confidence, the way his voice sounds in the microphone. Richie thinks about him, with his one huge pupil and eyeliner smeared across his lids, and pictures what he himself would look like, on stage, singing, in tight shiny pants. It’s ridiculous, it’s all ridiculous, but he envisions the crowd chanting his name for just being who he is. </p><p>Shaking this off, he puts the cassette in. ‘Five Years’ begins playing, and he leans back. There’s a gentle thrum to this that soothes him, the sprawl of Bowie's voice allowing him to get lost more easily than the Beatles did. He closes his eyes, and lets the spangles burst behind his eyelids.</p><p>
  <i>“I saw you with the broken arm”</i>
</p><p>The line jolts him out of his ease, and he sits up on the bed. He strains his memory, and finds a cast there, a disembodied arm attached to no one. He concentrates harder, zeroing in on the word on the cast. Did it read Loser or Lover?</p><p>He knows what an arm looked like when it‘s snapped in half, as gruesome as that is. He shudders as the next recollection hits him. He’d snapped it back. He’d taken his two hands and snapped an arm back into place and someone had screamed, he’d heard it echoing around him.</p><p>He pulls himself out of these recollections and tries to focus on the music. But it doesn’t help, because Bowie is chanting “five years” over and over again and Richie thinks about his last five years and even though it’s clear in his head, he comes up only with empty memoires, interactions that meant nothing amidst people that he remembers enough only to know they don’t matter. Why didn’t he have more of his memories from before then? And why had he never thought about that before?</p><p>He’s glad for the shifting track, because he doesn't know if he’d be able to pull himself out of these swirling thoughts on his own. He listens to ‘Soul Love’ and tries to concentrate on the background vocals, the way Bowie's voice arcs and curves, rather than the concept of love itself.</p><p>He lets the cassette play out until there’s nothing but the silent click of the wheels turning over until they too stop. He doesn’t know what to do next, filled with a restless energy. He’s tired, and he knows this is nowhere near over.</p><p>He thinks about his friends that he’d left in the park. They were probably back in Laurie’s apartment, cozy and languid. He wonders if they miss his presence. If they’re even thinking about him at all. He imagines them lazily passing Laurie’s bong back and forth, filling up the air with smoke.</p><p>Fuck. He wants to get high. He knows he’s already high, that getting fucked up further would put him in the danger zone, but he’s coming down a little and wants to re-up, drag himself out of whatever funk he’s pulling himself into. So he pushes himself up from his bed and digs around his desk drawer. He’s got a meager supply of weed and some papers. He does the best he can to form it into a joint, fingers exceptionally clumsy and mouth insanely dry as he licks the edges.</p><p> He goes to his window and considers opening it. Fuck it, neither of his roommates are here, and besides, he can scrounge up a candle or some shit. So he returns to his bed and props himself up against the headboard, grabbing a lighter from his bedside table.</p><p>He shouldn’t like getting high so much, but he does. It’s just a little break from everything else, where you could be stupid and people would laugh at the dumb shit he said even more readily than usual. He lights the end of the joint and inhales deeply, holding the smoke in his lungs for a moment before blowing it out.</p><p>Maybe he just has a bad memory and acid is unlocking different recollections. Or maybe he’s constructing an elaborate fantasy narrative in his head. Maybe this isn’t all real because he’s high as shit. But that doesn’t negate the fact he doesn’t remember his childhood at all, at least not up until this trip, and there’s something fucking weird about that. Everyone else he knows tells stories about when they were kids, but when he tries, he comes up with nothing. Until now, that is. Now it feels like a whole new world has been opened to him, a childhood he wasn't even aware he had. He’d had fun, it seemed. He’d had friends too.</p><p>He finishes the joint, stubbing it out on the windowsill and going to toss it out the window. He thinks for one second ‘that didn’t really do anything,’ until he lies back, and feels himself vaulted into space. Suddenly he’s tumbling, turning, going everywhere at one. He can’t think, he can’t move. His limbs are utterly frozen to the bed and he can’t imagine the effort he would have to exert to get himself mobile. So he doesn’t, instead letting whatever’s overtaking him grab him by the throat. He has no sense of time passing. He’s floating, he’s floating, he’s moving up through the air. “We all float down here,” a voice is saying, a twisted voice. “And you’ll float too! You’ll float too!”</p><p>He gasps, and sits up. Once again, the universe is trying to drag him down into a bad trip but he won’t let it. Maybe getting stoned was a bad idea but it’s too late now. He gets up off his bed. It was a mistake to turn the music off. He walks over a little woozily, and returns to his trusty tape deck. He rifles through the titles swimming in his head. He notices something and frowns. He could swear he’s never seen this tape before, has no recollection of naming it. But it’s one of his homemade ones, signature Richie Tozier scrawl on the side. He pulls it out.</p><p>“‘For Eddie’s Mom,’” he says out loud, like putting into the universe will make it real. He doesn’t understand because he’s never even met someone named Eddie. At least, not an Eddie that he remembers. It could be some inside joke.  </p><p>Maybe he’s hallucinating the tape. There’s only one way to find out. So he pops it in and lies back down on the bed. </p><p>It seems to be eighties music that he’s forgotten most of, overcome by the trends of the nineties. He still has the songs logged deep in his unconscious, and as the tape starts he feels himself being pulled in by its familiarity. He listened to this tape so much he wore it out, he can hear it in the scratchy way the thread spools out.</p><p>There's something that makes him nervous the first two tracks. They’re about love and longing, two emotions he rarely feels in his day to day life. Music has always been the conduit through which he could channel unspoken words. He was channeling something here, he just doesn't know what.</p><p>Then there’s more Bowie, which he’s grateful for. Maybe it isn’t as trippy as Ziggy Stardust, but Bowie’s voice has provided him an oasis in the storm. Plus, it isn’t a song explicitly about love, even though it is a little sappy.</p><p>It isn’t until he gets to ‘Lovesong’ that he starts thinking something might seriously be up. He loves the Cure, but he’s always avoided this song, because it makes something in his gut curl uncomfortably, like a tug on his belly button, a deep pang he doesn’t understand. It’s just too raw, the expression of complete love. But as hard as it is, he listens all the way through the track. </p><p>He’s never made a tape like this before. Everything he's made in college has been party mixes, songs to get fucked up to. He’d never put this much effort into making a mixtape for a girl; he'd never even made a mixtape for a girl. He wondered if Eddie’s mom was crazy hot, if he’d had a crush on her as a kid. That would almost be a relief in some ways. </p><p>When he gets to the next song he realizes this tape was never intended for another's ears. Because the next song is ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,’ and there’s no universe where he’d want to share that vulnerability with somebody, smoking hot MILF or otherwise. He’d made this for himself, to listen to in his room over and over and think about being in love, about wanting someone so badly it tears you apart. Which was insane because he’s never been in love. He has no idea what it even feels like. He's read books where people were in love and seen movies, but romantic love hasn't applied to any part of his life that he can remember.</p><p>He goes through the rest of the tape, revelation making him almost queasy. The theme continues: eighties love songs, all about a desire to be close, filled with affection for their subjects. Richie’s never turned that type of energy towards another person. He’s never heard a song and thought to himself that the lyrics applied to him, that he shared that sentiment in his heart about a special someone. He doesn’t have a special someone. He’s not a special someone.</p><p>There’s an air of asking, pleading, in all these songs, so he’s guessing the object of his affection didn't love him back. Poor, sad little Richie, sitting in his room and listening to sappy songs and thinking about someone who didn’t want him. Which would make sense if it was someone’s mom.</p><p>There’s a moment of silence before the last song. When it comes over his speakers, Richie literally jumps off his bed. It’s a soft, old song, like nothing else on the playlist. The lyrics start almost immediately, crashing into him.</p><p>
  <i>“Eddie my love, I love you so”</i>
</p><p>What the fuck.</p><p>He feels jolted, a bizarre feeling nestling in this chest right next to his heart, pushing against its pulse. He’s never been into music like this, or sought it out. It’s not to his taste at all. The only thing the song has in common with the rest of the playlist is the name. Eddie. He hadn’t made this mix for Eddie’s mom, he’d made this for Eddie. Eddie, who he doesn’t know anything about, but apparently was in love with.  </p><p>When the song ends he rewinds the tape just the beginning of the song and listens to it again. He can’t bear a third time, so he pops it out.</p><p>Has he been in love before? He tries to access those feelings within himself. For the first time he wonders if that might be where the ache he feels inside himself comes from. Loving and then not knowing, a hole in the center of him he’d never been able to out a name to before.</p><p>There has to be some proof. There has to be some proof this boy exists. He feels completely alert, like he needs to do something. He wants this to be over, this terribly disorienting trip, but he also wants to keep remembering what had been lost to him for so long, see what his mind comes up with. He goes and starts rifling through his desk drawers. He comes up with graded tests, unlooked at syllabi. This is useless. He must keep personal belongings somewhere, must have something just of his own. </p><p>He goes to his closet. There, on the top shelf, is a cardboard box he’s never paid much attention to before. He’d packed up his mementos in it before he left for college and never bothered to open it. He stretches up and pulls it down a little frantically, contents jostling inside.</p><p>It’s an unsatisfying romp into his past, not giving him much more information than he already had. There’s a flier for a school talent show, and a bird postcard with nothing written on the back, neither of which he recognizes. He keeps digging through though, and comes to something at the bottom. He pulls out a couple of notebooks, tabs sticking out from some of the pages. He remembers he used to keep joke books, writing down what people said and setups that came to mind.</p><p>He flips through one. 1993-1994, it says on the front cover. That doesn’t work. He remembers that. He flips through a couple more until he finds one that reads 1991-1992. This is it. He remembers 1992 but not 1991. He goes to the first page.</p><p>It’s mostly dumb stuff at first. Unfinished jokes, doodles of people being eaten by alligators. He’s a couple of pages in before he gets to the first real entry.</p><p>
  <i>I told him today that there was no reason to go to homecoming if he wasn’t there in a red velvet suit and he blushed and told me to fuck off and it was so damn cute I could have died. One day he’s going to get sick of me riling him up but until then it keeps his eyes on me so I'm not stopping.</i>
</p><p>The memory comes back to him dizzily. He was pinching someone's cheeks and saying “Cute, cute, cute!” The boy was swatting at him, yelling out “Cut it out Richie, I swear, get off me!” He’d loved getting into his physical space, making him blush.</p><p>He keeps going. it’s more of the same; sketches and half formed comedy routines interspersed with ruminations on this boy-Eddie. He recognizes his handwriting but he doesn’t remember having these thoughts. But as he reads further and further Eddie becomes more and more solid in his head, this angry motherfucker who Richie felt overwhelming affection for.</p><p>He gets to a page where the writing is spiky and distorted. He reads the first sentence.</p><p>
  <i>We’re moving we’re fucking moving and I’m so happy I’m getting out of this shithole town but I can’t leave him, I just can’t. I know I’m going to forget like Bill and Bev and Stan forgot. Because they wouldn’t have stopped calling, not all of them. Stan wouldn’t have just stopped calling. And now I'm going to do the same thing. Fuck. Fucking fuck.</i>
</p><p>He gets to an entry a little later. </p><p>
  <i>I told them all today, about leaving. Eddie got really quiet. He wouldn’t say anything the rest of the time we hung out. Ben said that it was different, that I was going to remember because we knew to prepare for it this time. I have to believe him.</i>
</p><p>He feels sick. Because apparently, he’d forgotten despite his best intentions. He’d forgotten, because he has no idea who Ben is. Whatever happened to him in his hometown fucked him up so badly he lost his memories. Is this what trauma is? Is this what trauma does to you? What the fuck had happened to him?</p><p>Then, another one.</p><p>
  <i>I won’t forget him. I refuse. He’s acting like I’m dying, but I know that even if I forget everything else, I won't forget him. He’s too important. There’s too much of us knit together; if I forget him I don’t know how to be a person, I don’t know anyone like I know him. Forgetting him would be like forgetting part of myself.</i>
</p><p> Is that what happened? Is that why there’s something missing at the center of him? There’s a person wandering around out there with a piece of Richie Tozier embedded in him, the missing piece, and that’s why he's such a wreck. He concentrates hard and tries to feel the pull of energy from this forgotten person. He feels a hollowness at the center of himself, like all of his organs have been scooped out. Oh God. Was that what happened to him, why he feels like a shell as he moves through the world, entertaining and deflecting without ever saying what he really means? Maybe metaphorically, but who knows, maybe literally. He can feel his heartbeat but not his heart; maybe there’s nothing there. He keeps flipping through the journal.</p><p>
  <i>I’m going to tell him. I'm going to tell him before I leave. I have nothing to lose because I’m never going to see him again, his mom will never let him leave Maine and I’m sure as fuck not coming back to Derry. </i>
</p><p>He gets to the last entry. It reads simply:</p><p>
  <i>I’m in the car driving away. All the remaining Losers came around to see me off. I couldn’t cry, I just couldn’t. Mike did, openly, Ben too. Eddie didn’t cry but I’ve never seen his face look like that before.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I should have told him I love him.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>I just have to remember. I’ll leave Derry and I’ll still remember. I'll grow up and I'll be stronger and better and I'll come back and I'll take him away from it all. This can’t be over. Not like this.</i>
</p><p>Richie’s crying and he doesn’t know why. He wipes his face and flips to the next page. There’s nothing there. He keeps flipping through the journal, but there’s nothing left. He roots through the box, wiping at his face, and finds a notebook labeled 1992-1993. He looks through it. More jokes, some complaints about his parents. Nothing about Eddie.</p><p>He feels sweaty, like he can hardly breathe. He wants to take all of his clothes, let the air touch every part of his skin, off but knows he would feel just as bad if he was exposed like that. So instead he opens the window and lets the cool breeze flow in. </p><p>He goes to his pack of cigarettes and grabs another. It’s a third of the way empty, maybe half, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t have it in him to go outside, so he props himself on his headboard once more. The pull of this cigarette feels as good as the first one, calming his nerves.</p><p>What the fuck. He always knew he was mentally fucked, but this is another level. How had he forgotten his whole childhood, these deep feelings that he’s never remembered before. He considers that this could just be something his mind is making up, but there’s tangible proof of it in front of him. Instead of drifting through his mind wispily, this keeps hitting him over and over with the truth of what he’s been forgetting for so long. And now he’s accessed these memories he can’t stop, waves of love and longing and missing someone so badly it makes his teeth hurt. </p><p>He feels like his reality is fracturing, like there are two different Richie’s on top of each other. Young Richie, who he doesn’t know but was apparently so fucking in love with this kid he could burst, and current Richie, who can barely acknowledge to himself that he’s gay.</p><p>He’s been able to ignore it for most of college so far, hooking up with girls in a series of one night stands that he hoped made him look like a player instead of dissatisfied. He just never felt a curl in his gut over the shape of a girl’s ass or long silky hair. He catches himself glancing too long at men’s faces, the hard places of a chest underneath tight sweaters. He knows there’s something wrong with him, he just hates to give it a name.</p><p>But there’s something that feels good about remembering Eddie even though he can only picture him in bits and pieces. Just a voice responding to his jokes in an angry tone, the outline of someone pressing a bandaid to his knee. But all of the memoires feel achingly familiar, and they just don’t stop coming. He could fill a book with all of the adventures he’s remembering he and Eddie had. This is scary as shit but none of the memories with Eddie in them are bad memories. He remembers smiling and laughing and fake wrestling until he was pinning him triumphantly in the dirt and trying to rub mud on him even as he screamed. He remembers the rare moments of quiet when everyone else was asleep and it was just the two of them watching the last part of a movie together, sitting closely underneath a borrowed blanket.</p><p>He doesn’t want to stop feeling like this. He doesn’t want to forget this again.</p><p>He goes to his 1991 journal and makes a fresh entry, writing 1995 on the top of the page. He starts scribbling, writing faster than he’s ever written before. His hand is cramping up and he doesn’t even know if it’s coherent but he needs to get it all down before he loses it, before the high leaves his body. </p><p>He’s fading, he knows that, and the thought makes him terrified, he can't let this go, now that he’s come so close. He’s grasping at the edges of love and he didn’t even know he could feel that before this moment but now it’s caught up to him and overwhelmed him, love, pulling him forward even when he didn’t know where it was coming from, even when he didn’t know what the cause was. He was loved in his childhood, and he loved, greater than anything he’s experiencing now.</p><p>He falls asleep still writing, clutching the pen in his hand as he continues trying to get his thoughts out, desperately holding on to the edges of his memories before they fade away.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. i'm gonna be the man who comes back home to you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Richie takes a drive</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Sorry it's taken me so long to update! Grad school apps hit me in the face lol<br/>Chapter title from I’m Gonna Be</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Richie wakes up he feels far better than he expected. From his previous experiences getting fucked up your body doesn’t feel great the next day, but he’s strangely settled in his limbs. He feels almost a little glowy. </p><p>The light coming in from his windows indicates it's sometime in the afternoon. He’s hoping he slept for something like twelve hours; he was definitely emotionally exhausted enough by the end of the night for his body to require a hard reset.</p><p>He stretches out on the bed and his fingers land on the notebook, still open. He sits up and snatches it up, poring over what he wrote last night in his new found state of sobriety. There’s a lot of random scribbling, some memories dashed off in frantic scrawls. His eyes fall to the last thing he wrote before he passed out.</p><p>
  <i>‘I know this is crazy but this is the realest I've ever felt in my whole life. I have to find him, I have to find him and get him back before I forget again and have to keep living with that hole inside myself. He’s the reason.’</i>
</p><p>He remembers the depth of his feelings from last night even though he’s not in that mindset anymore. Eddie. He needs Eddie. Eddie’s biting retorts, his care, the innate energy he possessed and the energy he shared with Richie. For whatever reason Eddie is missing from his life, he forgot him for five years. But he remembers, and now he can do something about it. </p><p>He goes down the hallways to call his parents. His mother picks up on the third ring. “Tozier household,” she says cheerily.</p><p>“Yes, hello, is your refrigerator running?” Richie says in a salesperson Voice.</p><p>“Hello, Richie,” his mom says. He can tell she’s smiling. </p><p>“Then you’d better go and catch it!” Richie finishes. </p><p>“Is there a reason for this call? Did you do something to break your poor mother’s heart?”</p><p>“I am and always will be on my best behavior. No, I was wondering, do you have any of my yearbooks? Ones from before we moved.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” his mom says. “But I can check.”</p><p>“You’re a doll, a real one, an absolute champ. I’ll come by in a bit to see if you found anything.”</p><p>They hang up and Richie goes back to his room, feeling jittery. He puts ‘For Eddie’s Mom’ back on, listening to it all the way through to see if it jogs more memories in him. Ironically, things are becoming less clear the further away he moves from the acid. He tries to write down the fleeting memories as the tape plays, thinking about this boy and these other people who populated his youth. Even though Eddie’s the clearest, there are others. He captures them all in bits and bursts even as he can’t recall all their facial features.</p><p>Eventually, he decides he’s given his parents enough time, and grabs his car keys. He'd used the money from working odd jobs to buy a dingy red Toyota Camry when he was still in high school; she isn’t pretty but she gets the job done.</p><p>When he gets into his parents house he lets himself in. “Someone’s breaking in and is about to steal all your valuables,” he calls out. </p><p>“You don’t always have to make an entrance like that, you know,” his father yells from another room. </p><p>“You need someone to keep you on our toes,” Richie yells back.</p><p>His mother comes out of the kitchen. “Maggie-Mae, Maggie-Moo, Maggie Ma, top o’ the mornin’ to ya,” Richie says.</p><p>“Hello to you too,” she responds affectionately.</p><p>“Did you find the yearbooks?” he asks. He knows it’s a shitty son move, to ask for a favor and then not even spend any time talking to his parents, but he’s conscious of the time crunch. He doesn’t want to start forgetting again, and he desperately needs to know that Eddie’s real, that this sense of certainty isn’t just his mind totally breaking down from the acid.</p><p>“I dug them all out from the attic,” his mom says, going back into the kitchen. She returns with a stack of hardcover books. “Go crazy,” she says.</p><p>Richie clutches them and goes back up to up to his childhood bedroom. It’s exactly the same as when he left for college, guitar he never really learned to play propped in the corner, posters for Nirvana and the Talking Heads covering the walls. He sits down on the bed and looks at the covers of the yearbooks. </p><p>1994, 1993, and 1992 are no good; they’re all from his high school in Chicago. But there it is; Derry High, 1991. Derry. That must be where he was from originally.</p><p>He feels a shudder go through him at that name. Derry. He hates Derry. He couldn’t wait to get out of Derry and never return. </p><p>He flips to the freshman class at the yearbook, right at the very front. It’s arranged alphabetically, and he takes his care looking over the pages. He finds an Eddie Davenport, but he looks at him and there’s just something not quite right, it’s not the right face. He doesn’t know what his Eddie looks like but this isn’t him.</p><p>He stops short when he gets to the beginning of the K’s. There might as well be no one else on the page as he zeroes in on that face. It’s the same face he thought he saw in the quad, the big eyes and the soft looking lips, only this time it’s right, it’s perfect. All the features are where they’re supposed to be, the proportions exactly right. There’s no doubt in his mind that he’s met him, that he knows him. Eddie Kaspbrak. When he was a kid he was in love with a boy named Eddie Kaspbrak. And, judging by the rush of emotions he feels looking at Eddie’s face, he’s still in love with him.</p><p>He’s shocked that he’s taking this all so calmly. But in the strangest way it makes sense. There was something at the heart of him that had been long dormant, and even as he’s astounded from a distance about this turn of events, all of the evidence points to it being the truth. Acid had given him the clarity necessary to rate emotional truths equal to factual ones. He wonders if he would accept this bizarre turn of events had he not been in an altered mind state when he realized them. Probably not. No one could have told him these facts about himself in any way to make them believable. They were just so far out of the bounds of what Richie’s life has been like so far.</p><p>But this feels right. Looking at Eddie’s face, he feels a sense of joy he hasn’t known before well up within him. He’s not crazy, this boy actually exists. Now all Richie has to do is find him. </p><p>He roots around for a pair of scissors and carefully cuts out the photograph, including his name. He tucks it away in his wallet. He wants to keep a reminder on him at all times. </p><p>He goes out of the house, calling a quick goodbye to his parents. “Did you find what you were looking for?” his mother calls out.</p><p>“Sure did, little lady,” he responds in a southern Voice. “Wrangled that steer, now I'm aiming to drag him all the way home.”</p><p>She looks at him with fond bemusement. “You’re a very silly boy. It’s all your father’s influence.”</p><p>“Don’t sell yourself short,” says Richie, swooping in to plant a kiss on her cheek. “The silly gene is recessive; I needed to get it from both of you to make me the incredibly ridiculous man I am today.”</p><p>“Glad to see you’re getting something out of your college education,” she responds. </p><p>“That, and the ability to do a keg stand,” he replies. “Now I gotta boogie!” he calls out on his way out the door.</p><p>He sits in his car for a second as he considers his next move. He knows this boy definitely exists, he just doesn't know how to find him. Even though he started out in Maine he could be anywhere now. Maybe he’s still in their hometown. Every part of Richie revolts at the thought of going back there, and he hopes, for so many reasons, that Eddie’s not there any more. </p><p>He’s driving back to his apartment when he has his brilliant idea. He just has to find out where Eddie goes to college. And there should be some way to track that. </p><p>He brainstorms all the way home. If Eddie stayed in Derry through high school then the school probably knows where he went to college. If he can contact them and get the information out of them, he’ll be one step closer.</p><p>He knows the school won’t open till morning. It kills him to dawdle, but he doesn’t really have a choice. So he goes to the backyard and smokes, continuing to write down memories as they come to him. It’s easier now that he can add Eddie’s face on top. The other figures are becoming fuzzier, but he’s able to hold onto Eddie as long as he keeps writing about him. He remembers his medical rants and the tenderness he would show when he thought Richie wasn’t looking. He can picture his smile and the gestures he made with his hands when he was emphasizing something. He was the only person who could ever keep up with Richie, who could talk just as fast and rattle off one liners just as quickly, snapping back at him until Richie’s head spun. </p><p>He goes to bed early. If all goes well, he’s going to have a long day tomorrow.</p><p>----</p><p>He gets up at eight the next morning, rolling straight out of bed. He figures the school will be open by nine, and he wants to get going as soon as possible. He shoves some stuff in a duffel bag, sniffing shirts to make sure they’re clean before throwing them in haphazardly. He doesn’t know how long he’s going to be gone but he’s never needed that much stuff anyway.</p><p>At nine exactly he goes to his phone and dials 411. He asks them to patch him through to Derry High School in Maine. It takes a couple of tries; Richie doesn't think they get many calls to Derry. But eventually, it’s successfully ringing.</p><p>“Derry High, how can I help you?” says a Maine accented woman’s voice.</p><p>“Yes, hello,” Richie says, putting on his smoothest, adultest Voice, vaguely impersonating Rod Serling. “My name is Jonas Laporte, and I’m with the Princeton Review. We’re checking in with some of the highest achieving schools in the country about where their graduating seniors go to college, and Derry was on that list. Would you be able to provide some information for us?”</p><p>“Yes, I can,” the woman says, sounding flattered. “What can I do for you?”</p><p>Richie relaxes. He wasn’t sure he’d get away with it. He can’t imagine a world in which Derry High is one of the top performing schools in the country, but delusions of grandeur go a long way.</p><p>“If you fax me over a list of where all of your seniors chose to go to college, we can cross analyze that data with information from other institutions, giving us a clear view as to our top performing schools in the nation.” He winces. Cross analyze. He sounds like a fucking tool. </p><p>She remarkably agrees, and he rattles off his parents’ number. One more favor on top of everything won’t bug them. Besides, they’re both probably at work, and won’t even notice. He leaves a short note to his roommates in case he’s not back by the start of classes and they worry that his absence means he’s dead. Then he hops into his car and speeds to his parents’ place.</p><p>Sure enough, no one is home. He makes his way to his dad’s office and goes to the fax machine. Several sheets of paper have fallen off the machine onto the floor, putting everything out of order. He goes through the pages, searching out the K’s. Eventually he finds him. Eddie Kaspbrak, University of Maine. </p><p>So he's driving to Maine. Fine. He can do that. It’s better than California or Florida. </p><p>While he’s still at home, he dials 411 again and jots down the address for U of Maine. He thinks about leaving a note for his parents but he’s mostly a grown adult; he’s allowed to take off for a couple of days without warning.</p><p>He goes back to his car and drags out the country atlas his father insisted he buy when he bought the car. “It’s always good to know where you are and where you’re going,” he’d said. Richie had groused about the extra cost at the time but now he’s grateful for it, especially considering his truly terrible sense of direction.</p><p>He charts out a route to Orono, stops at a gas station to grab food, and then he’s off down I-90 East.</p><p>---</p><p>It’s eighteen hours from Chicago to Maine which, unfortunately, Richie can’t do in one day. So he drives for about twelve hours before pulling over to a superstore parking lot and sleeping in his car. He rests for about six hours, then gets up to do the remaining six through Maine. He doesn’t usually smoke in his car but he cracks the window open while speeding down the highway to burn through some more of his pack.</p><p>He pulls into Orono a little after 1. It’s a shitty little college town, a couple of restaurants interspersed with unappealing looking shops. He goes towards the address he got from 411, arrives at U Maine’s campus, and starts idly wandering around. </p><p>He hadn’t really gotten to this part in his planning. He made it to the school, and now he has only a couple of thousand of people to go through instead of the whole country. Still, it’s rather daunting. </p><p>He goes to find some food and brainstorm. He’s eating a greasy cheeseburger when it hits him. He wouldn’t be able to get to Eddie, but maybe he could make Eddie come to him. He just needs to make his presence known. He chews a bit more, thinking about how to disseminate his whereabouts, when he glances over at the corkboard the diner has at the front of the restaurant plastered with help wanted notices and lost pet alerts. Fliers. He just needs to cover the whole campus with fliers.</p><p>He finishes his burger and goes to a drug store, picking up markers and paper. He goes to the local library and writes out his message. ‘Are you Eddie Kaspbrak?’ it reads. ‘If so, come to the big tree by MacNaughton at 6 pm.’ He picked a location he’d noticed in his earlier rambling that seemed relatively central. He goes to the photocopy machine and spends every piece of spare change in his pocket printing as many as he can. When he’s all out he packs up and heads out.</p><p>He spends the rest of his day walking around campus and putting up fliers anywhere there’s a public bulletin board. He even slips in after a couple of students to get access to some of the dorms. The entire time he’s doing it he’s looking out for Eddie’s face, but he doesn’t see him. </p><p>He finishes posting all of his fliers a little bit before the designated time. He goes to the tree and he waits. He figures he’ll give it about two hours before calling it quits for the night.</p><p>Eddie doesn’t show, which doesn’t surprise him. He hadn’t really expected anything from his first attempt. So, after the two hours are up, he wanders back to his car to sleep.</p><p>He sleeps in the next day until he’s awoken by a cop rapping on his window and telling him he needs to move. So he drives around until he finds a greasy spoon and stuffs himself with pancakes. He’s eating like shit on this trip, but he always eats like shit so it doesn’t really make a difference. </p><p>When he’s done, he goes back to campus to put up more posters. He’d done a pretty good job yesterday, but he wants to paper the motherfucker. After a while, he has to acknowledge to himself that he’s done all he can, and if Eddie can’t find him from this then he’s never going to find him. </p><p>He kills time before he has to go to the meeting spot by reading over his journal again. Things are getting a little more slippery in his mind but he’s clinging to his memories with everything he can. When he needs to, he takes Eddie’s yearbook photo out of his wallet and looks at his face, and things come flooding back.</p><p>A little bit before six, he heads back towards the tree. He wants a cigarette, but he knows Eddie doesn’t like it when he smokes, and he wants to start off on the right foot. Or maybe Eddie’s a smoker now, who knows. A lot could change in five years.</p><p>Richie feels anxiety start to creep over him. Maybe Eddie has changed completely since they'd last seen each other. People don’t stay the same as they were when they were fifteen. Maybe Richie had changed too. He could be a totally different person than he was freshman year of high school, the last time he and Eddie had really known each other. He doesn’t know himself well enough to say. Maybe Eddie won’t like him. Or worse, maybe he won’t like Eddie. </p><p>Unable to resist his craving, he pulls out a cigarette. He really hopes he can quit after this very stressful, extenuating circumstance filled several days. But nothing beats the relief of a cigarette and he’s not going to deny himself right now. </p><p>He’s puffing away when he hears him. “Hey, asshole!” someone shouts. Richie’s head whips up. He knows that voice. He tosses his barely smoked cigarette to the side. </p><p>Eddie is striding towards him. He looks mad, his expressive eyebrows furrowed and his mouth set in a stern line. He’s clutching one of the posters Richie made in his hand.</p><p>He looks different from the boy in the yearbook photo. His face is more angular, and his hair lies down a little flatter; it looks like he puts some product in it. But it’s still the same person from Richie’s memories, the boy he loved and lost.</p><p>Richie wants to cry. Even after seeing his picture, he didn’t let himself accept that Eddie truly existed. Even though he felt so real it must’ve been a thing he’d made up on acid because who the fuck has an epic, agonizing love for their best friend and then completely forgets about it? That’s insane. </p><p>But he’s more sure of anything else in his life that he knows this boy. He wants to fling himself at him and hold him, breathe in the familiar scent of his shampoo that’s mixed with just a tiny whiff of his laundry detergent. He wants to pinch his cheeks and make him laugh and hold him so tightly he feels every inch of him pressed up against him. </p><p>He’s not insane. Eddie is here, in the flesh.</p><p>“Oh thank fucking God,” he says. “Oh thank fucking God you actually exist.”</p><p>Eddie stops short in front of him. He’s just feet away from Richie and Richie feels like his every nerve is on fire in a way it’s never been before. He wants to memorize what Eddie’s face looks like, trace the contours with his fingers. He wants to make him smile and laugh and see his eyes shine.</p><p>Currently, however, Eddie’s face looks very mad. “Do you have any idea how creepy this is?” he yells, shaking the poster. “This is insanely fucking weird. Are you a stalker? Are you a serial killer?”</p><p>All Richie wants to do is touch him but he can’t. He knows now that this is what he was thinking of when he was on acid and said he was going home, even if he didn't understand it then. Being yelled at by Eddie Kaspbrak is home. “It’s me, Eds,” he says. “It’s me.”</p><p>“Who the fuck is ‘me’? I’m me too, dickwad, didn’t you ever think of that?”</p><p>Richie wants to laugh now, even as he still feels like crying. Eddie hasn’t changed. He’s still a spitfire and gives as good as he gets, and Richie still loves him.</p><p>“I can’t believe you weren’t just part of the trip,” Richie says. “It could’ve just been really good acid, but no, you actually fucking exist.”</p><p>Eddie looks horrified. “Oh my god, are you on acid? I swear to God Richie, if you’re on psychedelics right now I will-” Eddie cuts himself off. He looks at Richie. “Wait. Is your name Richie?”</p><p>And now Richie can’t help it. He does start crying, just a little, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Eddie fucking remembers. It’s not just him, creating an elaborate fantasy so as to not deal with the hole in the center of his life. He wasn’t making this whole thing up in his head. </p><p>He swallows it down and says thickly, “Guess yelling at me activated a primal part of your memory.”</p><p>Eddie looks at him with those big eyes, anger giving way to confusion. Richie wonders how he ever forgot what shade of brown they are, how deep they are, the way his lashes frame them. He wants to memorize them now to make sure he never, ever forgets them again. </p><p>“How the fuck do I know you?” Eddie says. “Because I definitely know your name but I have no fucking clue who you are.”</p><p>Richie feels his heart clench wildly at that. Maybe he won’t be able to get Eddie to remember him fully. Maybe you needed acid to activate that and there was no way in hell Eddie would drop acid.</p><p>“I’m Richie,” he says. “I’m your best friend.”</p><p>Eddie looks at him and he still doesn’t know him. Richie feels panic begin seeping through him. He can’t make Eddie remember.</p><p>“You know-‘You ain’t never had a friend, never had a friend, never had a friend, never had a friend like me,’” he sings in an imitation of Genie from Aladdin, doing a weird little shimmy gesture with his hands.</p><p>Eddie looks at him for a second, still confused, and then he gasps, eyes going wide. “Oh, shit,” he says. “Holy shit, Richie, it’s you.”</p><p>Richie knows his face is turning up in a dopey smile but he can’t help it. Eddie remembers.</p><p>Eddie takes two steps forward and sweeps him up in a hug. He fits differently in Richie’s arms; Richie has more than a couple of inches on him now. Richie had always been taller but it’s noticeable in a different way now. But he still fits against Richie’s chest, still feels warm. His hair even smells the same. </p><p>In that moment, Richie knows that this is what he’s been missing for the past five years of his life. This was the key that made the rest of the world make sense. </p><p>Eddie pulls away too quickly. “Holy shit, how did I forget you? You were the bane of my goddamn existence.”</p><p>“You were the bane of mine!” Richie says. </p><p>“What the fuck are you talking about, you’re the one who never shut up about fucking my mom.”</p><p>“I had to let you know how good I was giving it to her,” Richie says. He feels lighter than he has in ages; maybe ever. He wants to draw Eddie into his arms again and hold him and never let go. </p><p>But Eddie is moving too fast for him to do that. “But what the fuck is happening, seriously. Because I don’t think this is normal. Like, I thought that my childhood was boring and that’s why I forgot it, but we got up to a lot of non-boring shit. I think? God, it’s coming back in weird bits. Did we used to play in dirty quarry water? What the fuck was that.  And then I just forgot. What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?”</p><p>“You think I understand?” Richie says. “There I was, trying to enjoy my first time dropping, when suddenly all I’m fucking doing is remembering these people I didn’t know existed. The others, right? Tell me you remember the others.”</p><p>Eddie scrunches his nose and Richie wants to die. He’s been attracted to boys in college even when he could barely admit it to himself, starting at biceps and jawlines. But he’s felt nothing like the overwhelming rush that goes through his whole body when Eddie so much as makes an expression. This is how he must have known he was gay as a kid, because he can barely look at Eddie without wanting to kiss him.</p><p>He reigns himself in. He still has so many questions, and he’s sure Eddie has more. This is not the time to go wild over having his re-discovered object of affection in front of him.</p><p>“I kind of remember the others,” Eddie says. “Like, I know where there was more than just you and me, but I can't really see them. I just remember biking, and there’s people in front of me who I'm following. But none of it is clear. You’re the clearest part of all of it.”</p><p>Richie doesn’t have time to address that before Eddie continues. “But why are you here?” he asks. “How are you here?”</p><p>Riche feels himself coming off the adrenaline high after finally finding Eddie, the relief of what could have just been a very involved hallucination being actualized. </p><p>“Can we go get something to eat?” Richie says. “I’m fucking starving and I don’t know if I can do this on an empty stomach.”</p><p>“Do this?” Eddie says “What do you mean, do this?”</p><p>“Your tone, that’s this!” Richie says. “Jesus fucking Christ Eds, we’re both having a crisis here, can’t we at least eat something?”</p><p>“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie snaps, and then pauses. “You used to call me Eds,” he says. “No one else has ever called me Eds. God, I fucking hated that, how did you let you get away with that for years?’’ Richie feels strangely like crying again. “You didn’t,” he says. “You gave me shit for it every single time” he says. </p><p>“I did, didn't I,'' Eddie responds, smiling a little. “I never shut the fuck up.”</p><p>“One of the many things I loved about you,” Richie says, wishing it wasn't the absolute truth. “Now, I’m fucking starving, show mercy to a poor boy.”</p><p>“I never have before, I’m not going to start now. But I also don’t want you to starve to death before you explain what the fuck is going on, so c’mon.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I know this chapter was a lot of filler but in next chapter we get more Eddie!!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. good times for a change</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eddie remembers</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter title from 'Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want'</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When pressed about the restaurants in town Eddie is forced to admit he's never eaten off campus and has no idea where to go. So Richie takes him back to the diner he went to his first night. He orders the same cheeseburger and fries, because it’s good, but Eddie wrinkles his nose up at every item on the menu. </p>
<p>“I’ve definitely seen you eat a hot dog,” Richie says. “Nothing on here can be worse than that.”</p>
<p>“I don’t remember that so I don't think it’s true,” Eddie says.</p>
<p>“I’ve been doing this remembering game longer than you have, you'll catch up,” Richie says. </p>
<p>Eddie frowns, and Richie memorizes that frown, memorizes every line. Because that’s his ‘annoyed at Richie frown,’ which is different from his ‘someone isn’t observing the right safety precautions’ frown, which is different from his, ‘I'm embarrassed and I don’t want to admit it’ frown. He loves all of his frowns and he wants to see them, again and again.</p>
<p>When the waitress comes around Eddie just orders the caesar salad with no dressing. Richie remembers all his initial food peculiarities and the way they started breaking down after that summer-and even though he doesn’t know exactly what ‘that summer’ means, he knows it’s important-and Eddie started eating whatever he wanted. But before that it was bland crackers and undressed greens, food not fit for human consumption, let alone a growing boy. </p>
<p>They tell each other about their lives. Eddie is studying business, even though he only has a vague idea of what he wants to do afterwards. He doesn’t mention many friends or clubs or anything outside of school and work, and Richie wonders if he’s felt the same inability to connect with people that he has. But Richie makes it sound like his life is full, telling him stories about his little gang.</p>
<p>“I can’t believe you did something as stupid as drop acid,” Eddie grumbles.</p>
<p>“Didn’t have you to stop me from making terrible choices,” Richie replies. </p>
<p>“I never stopped you from making terrible choices. You just dragged me down with you sometimes.”</p>
<p>Richie remembers sneaking out of one movie theater into another, pulling Eddie behind him. He’d convinced Eddie to spend all day at the movies, hopping from theater to theater, and even though Eddie insisted they were going to get caught they didn’t.</p>
<p>“So what do you think is going on?” Eddie asks. “Like, why did we forget so much? It seems like the others forgot too, not just us, because I remember being sad about someone not calling. But I can’t remember anything else about them. And I know it’s not you, because I remember being sad about you calling in a different way, like I expected it, like I knew you’d forget about me. And that’s not normal. I always just assumed because so much of me is abnormal that this was just another thing. But it seems like it’s more than that.”</p>
<p>“I think something bad happened to us. When we were kids,” Richie says. “When I was high, I remembered us doing a lot of cool shit, but there were a couple of times when things just seemed . . . wrong. Really fucking wrong. I hoped I was just hallucinating it, making it up, but if you’re real that’s probably real too.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean, wrong?” Eddie asks, sounding apprehensive.</p>
<p>“Like, evil wrong. Beyond normal evil. Super evil. We encountered something that’s beyond comprehension.”</p>
<p>“And so we all forgot because of the trauma?”</p>
<p>“Maybe? I don’t know how this works.”</p>
<p>“I remember breaking my arm,” Eddie says. “Sometimes my right elbow twinges and I’ve never known why. But I still don’t remember how I broke it. Some parts are still fuzzier than others.”</p>
<p>“Holy shit, I reset it,” Richie says. “The memories have been fading in and out for me. Being here with you helps, but it’s harder to remember the others than it was before. I wouldn’t know their names if I hadn’t written them down. But I’d know them if I saw them.”</p>
<p>“I think I would too,” Eddie says. “It’s weird, but even though it’s hard to remember specifics I can still remember the feeling. Like, free and warm and happy. I think these people made me feel really good.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, while I was making your mom feel really good!” Richie says. </p>
<p>“You never made me feel good though,” Eddie says. “You just made me fucking mad.”</p>
<p>“Stop it, you love me,” Richie says, hoping he’s giving nothing away.</p>
<p>The waitress comes over to drop off their plates and Richie digs into his burger. Eddie more gingerly picks at his salad.</p>
<p>“Do you remember sledding down Heiner Hill?” Richie  says. “When I kept building up those bumps for us to catch air on?"</p>
<p>Eddie starts laughing. “You talked me into the dumbest shit,” he says. </p>
<p>“Every friend group needs a wild card.”</p>
<p>They swap stories and memories back and forth, filling in gaps. Richie finds it comes back easier when he’s with Eddie. Or at least the memories with Eddie in them do. Eddie chasing him around because he ate the last twinkie, Eddie handing him a card on his birthday that had two handmade coupons, one ‘I fucked your mom’ pass and one ‘Eds’ pass, Eddie next to him as they read a comic in the clubhouse together. </p>
<p>They stay there for a long time, until the waitress starts throwing them looks and coughing every time she goes by their table. Richie doesn’t know why she’s being like this, it’s not like the restaurant is full to bursting, but some people just need to be bitter. He and Eddie both throw money down on the table and go into the night.</p>
<p>It’s fully dark outside, street light illuminating the small sidewalk they’re on. Eddie turns to Richie. “Where are you staying?” he asks. “I’m assuming you’re not driving back to Chicago right now.”</p>
<p>“Oh, I’ve just been sleeping in my car,” Richie says. </p>
<p>“Jesus Christ, what is wrong with you, do you have any idea how dangerous that is? You’re incredibly vulnerable like that, anyone could break the window and do anything to you.”</p>
<p>“It’s not like I’m rolling and cash and can book a hotel,”  Richie says. “Besides, it’s easier.”</p>
<p>Eddie sighs. “You can stay with me tonight,” he says. “I have a single room, so it’s not like we’ll be bothering anyone.”</p>
<p>Richie’s pulse speeds up at the thought of spending the night with Eddie. He’s done it so many times, sleepovers in someone's basement, curled up in one of their beds. But those aren’t the type of sleepovers you have in college, and Richie can’t shake the feeling that this is different, even though it’s just Richie and Eddie, the way it’s always been. </p>
<p>They make their way back to Eddie’s dorm, still talking about the past. Eddie remembers some things Richie doesn’t, filling in some of the gaps. Richie wishes that they remembered the others better but he’s so grateful he can remember Eddie he only cares a little bit. </p>
<p>Eddie lets them into his dorm room, and the air is tense for the first time. “So,” he says, sweeping a hand out. “This is it.”</p>
<p>It has almost no personality. No photos, no mementos, no posters. Just a neat desk with textbooks, a made bed (something Richie doesn’t think he’s ever seen in a college dorm room before). The biggest change Eddie's made is bringing in a floor lamp, which he switches on as Richie steps over the threshold.</p>
<p>“I lived at home the first year,” Eddie says. “When I told my mom I was going to U of Maine she freaked out that I was going to be so far. But then she just followed me. After one year I told her I was done, and even if it was more expensive I’d pay with the money I’d made working a job last year, and she couldn’t stop me.”</p>
<p>“So your mom still sucks, huh,” says Richie, settling on the bed. He knows it’s Eddie’s space but it feels so un-Eddie. </p>
<p>“She doesn’t suck,” Eddie says. “She just worries.”</p>
<p>“Trust me Spaghetti, she sucks too,” Richie says, waggling his eyebrows.</p>
<p>“You suck,” Eddie says without any heat. He moves further into the room. “What time were you going to head out tomorrow? I have class pretty early, but then I don’t have anything else till the afternoon.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean, head out?” Richie asks.</p>
<p>Eddie starts shuffling his shoes off. “To go back to Chicago,” he says. “It's a long drive, right? You need to get an actual motel room this time; do you want to be a highway murder statistic?”</p>
<p>Richie hadn’t considered what would come next. He’d been so focused on finding Eddie, and then focused on just being around Eddie, that he hadn’t stopped to think about the next steps. Now that he’s considering he finds that they’re bad. They’re bad and they all lead away from Eddie.</p>
<p>“How am I supposed to go back?” he says.</p>
<p>“You start with I-95 going south, and then I think you cut onto 2-95-”</p>
<p>“I don’t mean like that, I mean how the fuck am I supposed to go back and forget all over again?”</p>
<p>“You’re not going to forget,” Eddie says. “Neither of us are going to forget.”</p>
<p>“Where the fuck are you getting that from?” </p>
<p>“We forgot everything that happened in our hometown. Now that we’re not there anymore, we’ll remember. Obviously.”</p>
<p>“Not fucking obviously!” Richie exclaims. “We didn’t just forget our hometown, we forgot each other. And it’s going to happen again the second I get out of town.”</p>
<p>“No, it’s not,” says Eddie, still infuriatingly calm. “You’ll leave your phone number with me, and I’ll call, this isn't going to be like the last time.”</p>
<p>Richie gets off the bed and starts pacing. He has no idea how Eddie isn’t more upset by the thought of their separation. Richie had just gotten this back and he’s going to lose it again, lose it all over when he no longer has Eddie’s face in front of him.  </p>
<p>“You don’t understand,” he says. “I was starting to forget you on the way over here, everything just got fuzzier and fuzzier.”</p>
<p>“And now that you’ve met me, and you know that I’m real, that won’t happen again. This is different,” Eddie insists.</p>
<p>“But how can we know that?” Richie says wildly. “Because I don’t understand how any of this shit works! It’s weird fucking magic, and I don’t understand it. I was missing like fifteen fucking years of my life, and all of my formative memories, and all of these fucking friends I didn’t know I had. And if we don’t do anything that all goes away, we go back to just being empty fuckers with no real friends.”</p>
<p>“And what are we supposed to do?” Eddie yells, finally breaking. “There’s nothing we can do! So let’s just not fucking talk about it!”</p>
<p>Richie stops pacing. He sees panic there in Eddie’s eyes, panic he doesn't want to push too hard. Because Eddie’s right. What are they supposed to do? There’s some type of cosmic force keeping them apart, and what is Richie supposed to do in the face of that? Maybe the universe doesn’t want him to be happy. </p>
<p>“Okay,” he says numbly. </p>
<p>“I could come visit Chicago on break,” Eddie says. “I have some money saved up.”</p>
<p>“Your mom won’t let you leave Maine,” Richie says.</p>
<p>“She can’t stop me,” Eddie says. “We’re not fifteen and stupid anymore, we can find ways of making this work.”</p>
<p>Richie really, really wants to believe him. He wants to believe the connection they’ve reignited between the two of them will stay aflame despite the miles they put between each other. But he knows that isn’t how this works, that they haven't somehow found a cheat code in the playbook. Outside of Derry, apart from each other, they forget each other. It’s as simple as that.</p>
<p>But Eddie’s right, and there’s nothing they can do. So he musters himself up and says, “Or maybe I can visit again, give her the good loving she’s been missing so desperately. Tell me, does she cry out my name in her sleep? ‘Oh Richie,’ he says breathily, “‘Please give it to me, Richie.’”</p>
<p>“Beep beep,” Eddie says. “I’m fucking exhausted and I have to be up at eight tomorrow, can we get to bed?”</p>
<p>“You got to bed, I go to floor,” Richie says, hopping off the bed. “Do you have an extra blanket at least?”</p>
<p>“The fuck are you talking about?” Eddie asks.</p>
<p>“You sleep on the bed, I sleep on the floor?” Richie clarifies.</p>
<p>“I’ve never made you take the floor before, I’m not going to start now. Unless you don’t want to share a bed?”</p>
<p>Richie’s brain short wires. He remembers being pressed up against Eddie in his twin bed, hearing his gentle little snores. He’d felt so fucking content lying there, legs wrapped around Eddie’s. He hadn’t even known he’d been missing it but now he remembers it he knows it’s his favorite way to fall asleep.</p>
<p>“I’m not saying no to a bed after sleeping in a car for two nights,” Richie says. “Thanks, Spagheds.”</p>
<p>“Just don’t want to to fuck up your back,” Eddie says.</p>
<p>Eddie gets ready for bed, while Richie just takes his jeans and shoes off and crawls in. Even though it’s just a shitty college dorm mattress it feels heavenly to be horizontal. He lies there, eyes closed, as Eddies moves around the room. Eventually he finishes up and turns off the lights, slipping into bed next to Richie. They have to turn to the side so they’re not pushing each other out of the bed, and even then, it’s hard not to brush up against each other. </p>
<p>Even though he knows he should be trying to sleep, Richie never felt more alert in his life. He can see the back of Eddie’s neck in the darkness, the slope of his shoulders underneath his shirt.</p>
<p>He’s terrified to let this go. Even if Eddie’s right and they do remember this time they’ll still be fifteen hundred miles apart. There’s nothing he can do about the separation. Maybe they’ll call, and see each other twice a year or so, but it won’t be the same.</p>
<p>But more than that he’s so scared he’s going to forget again. That, even though he now has proof of Eddie’s existence, the significance of his photo and the notes Richie has will slip away until they lose all meaning. He’ll just write everything down and look at it every day. Keep Eddie’s picture in his wallet to remind himself what he looks like. They can’t forget if they call every day, right?</p>
<p>He thinks Eddie’s asleep until he hears a quiet “Richie?”</p>
<p>“Yeah, Eds?” Richie responds.</p>
<p>“I don’t really have asthma, do I?” Eddie asks.</p>
<p>Richie takes a deep breath. He hadn’t imagined he’d have to do this. But of course Eddie doesn’t know about all the bullshit his mom forced on him, all the lies she told him his entire life, because he forgot it all. He feels immense rage of whatever force in the universe robbed Eddie of those memories, made him forget the times he stood up to her. And then a more tangible rage at Sonia Kaspbrak for putting Eddie through hell.</p>
<p>“No,” Richie says in the darkness. “No, you don’t.”</p>
<p>It’s quiet for a moment. Then Eddie just screams out “FUCK!”</p>
<p>Richie winces. Even for Eddie that was loud. He’s about to crack a joke when Eddie’s shoulders start shaking and Richie realizes that he’s crying, big heaving sobs tearing their way out of his chest.</p>
<p>Richie hesitates a moment then scooches closer and wraps his arms around him. He doesn’t know if this is okay or even welcome, but he has to do something. Eddie sinks into him, clutches onto his forearms, and Richie holds on tighter. </p>
<p>“It’s bullshit,” Eddie says between sobs, “Fucking bullshit!”</p>
<p>Eventually Eddie quiets down but doesn’t move to disentangle himself from Richie’s arms. As selfish as it might be, Richie isn’t going to do anything to dislodge him.</p>
<p>“She would lay out my meds for me every morning before I went to school,” Eddie says. “And I didn’t question it. I just took them. I’ve believed everything she's said for the past two years, barely managing to fight her. You know she wouldn’t let me room with anyone else? That was the only way I could room on campus, if I didn’t share space with anyone else. I thought it was because she didn’t want me to be exposed to anyone else’s germs. Now I just think she doesn’t want me to have everyone else in my life. So all I know is being totally alone.”</p>
<p>“You weren’t alone though,” Richie says. “You had me, and you had us, and we did a lot of shit that your mother had no control over.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, and then I lost that. She has control over everything I do now. I still call her every day, and see her every weekend. She’s the only person I talk to.”</p>
<p>Richie, for once, is quiet, letting Eddie spool out his thoughts.</p>
<p>“I’ve always accepted that she just cares a lot, and worries a lot, and wants what's best for me. But now I remember how she wouldn’t let me do anything or even be my own person, and I don’t know if she really wants me to be happy. She just wants me to stay in the house and never leave her, never do anything that challenges her.”</p>
<p>“But you did challenge her, even after you forgot,” Richie says. “You moved out, even though it was hard, even though you didn’t remember standing up to her before. And you're going to keep doing shit like that until she doesn't control you anymore."</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” Eddie says. “I don’t know if I have it in me to be that person.”</p>
<p>“Well, I know you,” Richie says. “And I know you’re braver than you think, and stronger than all the bullshit the world has put you through. And now you know your mom is a lying bitch and you don’t have to put up with her anymore.”</p>
<p>“You don’t know me,” says Eddie. “You don’t know if I’ve changed. Gotten weaker. I remember being brave when I was a kid, and then I forgot all of it, and I don’t know if I can get it back.”</p>
<p>Richie swallows. He thinks about the Eddie from his youth compared to the Eddie in his arms. He might be different, might be a little more reserved and fussier, but he knows Eddie so deep in his bones that even the changes don’t come as a surprise. Just because Eddie is evolving like everyone does doesn't mean he knows him any less. </p>
<p>“Of course I know you,” he says. “You’re Eddie Spaghetti. You once out ran someone who challenged you and after you won you kept running because you could. You’re a terrible liar; I can always tell because you won’t make eye contact. You won’t eat cold pizza because you say the cheese tastes like rubber. Like it or not, I know you. And I know what you’re capable of.” He doesn’t know if he’s ever been this serious with Eddie before, but nothing about this situation is normal. </p>
<p>“I guess,” Eddie says. </p>
<p>“Trust me,” Richie responds. “When I dropped acid the universe revealed itself to me, and it told me you’re batting .300. Out of the park, flying over the fence, grand fucking slam. Babe Ruth called, he wants his reputation back.”</p>
<p>An almost involuntary seeming laugh comes from Eddie’s lips. “Don’t act like you know anything about baseball.”</p>
<p>“I know more things than you could ever dream of,” Richie responds.</p>
<p>Eddie doesn’t say anything else and Richie thinks he’s drifted off. But then he says, “I really missed you.”</p>
<p>Richie’s arms tighten around him. He feels Eddie’s back pressed up against his chest, the gentle tickle of his hair in his nose. “I really missed you too,” he says.</p>
<p>“It’s stupid, because I didn’t even know about you for the last two years. But I missed you when I didn’t even know you existed. There’s just been something not right about everyone else.”</p>
<p>“Me too,” says Richie. “Like, no one clicked.”</p>
<p>“I remember missing you after you left our hometown, when there were less and less of us. I was glad you made it out of . . .” he pauses. “Where did we live?”</p>
<p>“Derry,” Richie supplies.</p>
<p>“Yeah, Derry. I was happy you didn’t have to live in that shithole anymore but . . . it was fucking lonely.”</p>
<p>“I was lonely too,” Richie says. “I didn’t make any real friends after I left Derry. At least you had the others.”</p>
<p>“I left someone behind there,” Eddie says. “I wasn’t the last. I told him to get out, but he told me he had to stay. He said someone needed to remember.”</p>
<p>“So one of us is still there,” Richie says. </p>
<p>“Yeah, stuck in that hellhole,” Eddie says. “Or maybe he left, I don’t know. I don’t think he would though. He was . . . good. Steady. Fuck, I wish I remembered more.”</p>
<p>	“At least one of us remembers everything,” Richie says. “Even though it would’ve been best if we all got out.”</p>
<p>	“We’ll get more and more back,” Eddie says confidently. “Soon we’ll be able to remember the others.”</p>
<p>Richie doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t believe him. He just has to hope he’s right.</p>
<p>Richie expects Eddie to extract himself from his arms but he doesn’t. If anything he settles deeper. </p>
<p>“I’ll wake you up when I leave for my class,” Eddie says.</p>
<p>“Sounds good, Eds,” Richie says sleepily. His exhaustion from the last several days is catching up to him and he feels more content with Eddie in his arms than he has in years.</p>
<p>“Night, Rich,” Eddie says, and Richie slips off</p>
<p>	---</p>
<p>Richie awakes the next morning to Eddie saying “Time to get up, asshat.”</p>
<p>Richie blinks his eyes open. Everything is blurry without his glasses but he sees the vague shape of Eddie standing over the bed. </p>
<p>“Whazzat?” he says blearily.</p>
<p>“I’m heading out,” Eddie says. “I’m guessing you’ll be gone by the time I get back, so I wanted to say goodbye.”</p>
<p>Suddenly far more alert, Richie snatches his glasses off the bedside table. Eddie comes into focus. He has this adorable oversized backpack like he’s a turtle with his whole home on his back, and his hair is still wet, curling up a little at the edges. </p>
<p>“You can probably sneak into the dining hall and get coffee before you head out,” Eddie says. </p>
<p>Richie wants to tell him to come back to bed, to hold him, to not leave him now or ever again. But instead he says “Thank for the tip, Eds,” and yawns, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. </p>
<p>“Promise me you’ll get a motel room tonight,” Eddie insists. “You need to call me from the road so I know you’re not sleeping in your car.” </p>
<p>“What's the number for the phone here?” Richie says.</p>
<p>“Here, I’ll write it down,” Eddie says, going to grab a piece of paper. “Yours, too,” he says, offering another one to Richie. Richie scribbles his number off and gives it back. “I live in an apartment, so it’ll go straight through,” Richie says. “Call whenever.”</p>
<p>Eddie tucks the paper away in a desk drawer. “I will,” he promises. He looks at Richie and shuffles around a little awkwardly. Then he reaches up and flings his arms around his neck.</p>
<p>Richie, still a little sleep addled, doesn’t react from a moment. Then he draws Eddie closer to him, smelling the familiar scent of his shampoo. He commits this to memory. Eddie against him, his smell, his warmth. And then all too soon it’s over and Eddie is pulling away. </p>
<p>“I’ll see you soon, okay?” Eddie says. Richie looks at his face and takes a mental snapshot, then another, then another, to make sure he doesn't forget. Then he nods. Eddie turns and goes to the door. He glances over his shoulder once more and says, “Don’t forget to get gas before you leave town.”</p>
<p>“You know I only run on premium, baby,” Richie says, and Eddie frowns before his lips quirk up in an involuntary smile, and then he’s gone. </p>
<p>Richie wants to fall back into Eddie’s bed and breathe into his pillow. But this is the end of his quest, and there’s no use dawdling. He goes to the bathroom with his toothpaste and toothbrush and prepares to become a real person.</p>
<p>In the bathroom, he tries to clean himself with paper towels. He thinks about the drive home, the apartment that awaits him that, even if his roommates were home, would still be empty. He doesn’t know what he expected to happen. That Eddie would run away with him, get out of Maine for and for all, and come back with him to Chicago? Richie understands that’s ludicrous. But he wants to keep Eddie in his life so badly. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do without him now that he’s had this taste. </p>
<p>He goes back to Eddie’s room and changes his clothes, packing and unpacking his duffle bag. At that point, he has to admit there's nothing more that he can do. Before he leaves, he glances at Eddie’s bed and he goes over to gently pull the sheets up, beginning the process of making the bed.</p>
<p>He’s plumping the pillows when the door bursts open. Eddie is standing there, red cheeked and panting. He barges into the room and throws his back pack on the ground.</p>
<p>“I thought you had class,” Richie says.</p>
<p>“Why me?” Eddie asks. His nostrils are flaring a little and it looks like he’s been running his hands through his hair.</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” Richie asks cautiously.</p>
<p>“Out of all of us, you remembered me. Why?”</p>
<p>Richie’s brain comes to a screeching halt. He hadn’t prepared an answer for this, and he’s deeply regretting that now. </p>
<p>“Because you were my best friend,” Richie says.</p>
<p>“We were all best friends,” Eddie says, approaching him. “That was the point, we were all best friends with each other.”</p>
<p>“You were . . . different,” Richie stalls.</p>
<p>“Okay, different how?” Eddie insists.</p>
<p>“We had this  . .  . bond,” Richie says. “You know, you remember me and not the others.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, but that’s because you showed up,” Eddie says. He doesn't back down, still just staring at Richie. “There has to be a reason. I remember you caring about all of us, not just me, even though I remember a lot of times with you.”</p>
<p>“We hung out a bunch, okay?” Richie says. “So there’s just a lot more memories with you in them.”</p>
<p>“That’s not it and you know it. When you were high as shit, why did you remember me? You could have thought of any of the others, but it was me. Why me? What’s so fucking special about me?”</p>
<p>He’s at his breaking point. He’s running on three nights of shitty sleep and adrenaline and most likely he’s never going to see Eddie ever again so why not be honest for once in his goddamn life. “Because I was in fucking love with you,” Richie says. “Because I was in love with you and I think I still am. You made me feel so fucking much and when I tripped it was like, oh shit, I have all these goddam feelings, and they’re all about you. So I drove two thousand miles to find you because there was literally nothing else I could do. And now I’ve found you and you’re fucking real and somehow you’re even more than I remembered. So don't ask me why you're so special, why I remembered you, because I have no idea how I forgot you in the first place.”</p>
<p>He’s breathing heavy, he realizes. He never lets himself be that open and honest and vulnerable. But he’s laid it all on the line now and there’s no turning back.</p>
<p>Eddie doesn't move for a second. The he just breathes out, “Oh.” He sits down at his desk and looks off. “Okay.”</p>
<p>“Yep, that’s the bit,” Richie says weakly. He’s terrified of what Eddie’s about to say next. Maybe he’s going to lose him anyway. Because now Eddie knows he's dirty and wrong and probably wishes he never remembered him in the first place.</p>
<p>“Fuck, I-” Eddie breathes out heavily. He's looking off into the distance, eyes focusing on something unseen from the past. “Fuck, I was in love with you too.”</p>
<p>Richie feels like he’s buzzing, like his skin is tingling all over, his heart beating wildly out of his chest. He chokes out “You were?”</p>
<p>“I mean, I'm just remembering it now,” Eddie says. “I didn’t realize when you first got here. But . . . yeah, I was so fucking into you.”</p>
<p>Richie feels like he’s poised on a precipice, capable of teetering over into something unknown, or about to fall back into the dirt and never taste the sky. But he has to ask, he has to know. So he says, as levelly as he can, “Are you still so fucking into me?”</p>
<p>Eddie looks at him. He sweeps over Richie; from his rumpled hair to his beat up converse. Then he nods, slowly, thoughtfully. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think I still am.”<br/>“You think or you know?” Richie asks, incapable of not prodding. “Because I said I think but I lied, I’m definitely still crazy in love with you.”</p>
<p>“I think I fucking know, okay? I only remembered you existed like twelve hours ago, and you could be running some kind of cult, or selling meth. So I'm pretty sure I’m in love with you, but I need at least a week to be sure.”</p>
<p>“I’ll give you a week,” Richie says dizzily. “Or eight says, or nine day, or however many fucking days. Take my days, they've been kinda shitty up to this point.”</p>
<p>“Mine too,” Eddie says. He’s still looking at Richie. Slowly, carefully, Richie walks over, and drops to his knees in front of Eddie. “Can I . . . can I kiss you?'' he asks hesitatingly.</p>
<p>Eddie swallows and Richie does all he can not to watch the line of his throat move. “Yes,” he says. “Kiss me.”</p>
<p>Richie closes the gap between them and presses his lips to Eddie’s. They’re warm and soft; Richie bets he does something crazy like exfoliate them. He feels their noses brush together as they move very gently. It’s tentative, and soft, and Richie just barely feels the touch of Eddie’s mouth against his.</p>
<p>It’s probably the best kiss of Richie’s life.</p>
<p>Richie wants to deepen it, wants to press against Eddie and twine his fingers through his hair. But he doesn’t want to push too hard. But to his surprise, Eddie grabs the collar of his flannel and pushes closer, opening his mouth against Riche’s. He kisses him harder, a little clumsily, and Richie pushes back against him, gently reaching out with his tongue. He reaches his hands up and runs them through Eddie’s hair just how he’s always dreamed of, feeling the soft strands brush up against his fingers. Eddie moves to get a better angle, and Richie gently captures his lower lip, sucking on it.</p>
<p>Eddie pulls away.  “Holy fuck,” he says. “Is it always like that?”</p>
<p>“No,” Richie says. “At least, it’s never going to be like that for me.”</p>
<p>Eddie looks at him before diving back in to kiss him again. It’s openly hungry now, Eddie pushing against Richie as he twines his fingers in his hair. When he pulls away Richie is breathing heavily, a little dazed.</p>
<p>“I’m not letting this go,” Eddie says. “We have to make sure we don’t forget again.”</p>
<p>“I thought you said we weren’t going to forget this time?” Richie asks. “You seemed pretty confident last night.”</p>
<p>“Fuck that, I’m not taking any fucking chances. We deal with this now, we figure out what fucked us up so badly when we were kids, and we fix it. I don't know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to do something.”</p>
<p>“Okay,” Richie agrees immediately. “Let’s deal with this shit. Let’s make a fucking plan.” He gets up off the floor; his knees, while not disastrous, are beginning to complain. “There’s gotta be something we can fucking do.”</p>
<p>“I think we have to go back,” Eddie says. “Back to Derry. See if we remember more, find the one of us who stayed.” </p>
<p>“Maybe get everyone back together,” Richie says. “You weren’t that hard to find, we can do it four more times.”</p>
<p>“And then whatever it is we deal with it, figure out what fucked us up so bad and stop it. Fight it, if it comes to that.”</p>
<p>Eddie gets up off of the chair and goes to his closet. He pulls down a duffle bag and throws it on the bed. “You’re already packed, so this should be quick,” Eddie says.</p>
<p>“What, go right now?” Richie asks.</p>
<p>“Yeah,” Eddie says. “No more fucking dawdling.”</p>
<p>Richie shakes himself off. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, let’s go face the music.”</p>
<p>Eddie starts going through his drawers and carefully places clothes in his bag. Richie watches him move around, the question he wants to ask poised at the tip of his tongue.</p>
<p>“What happens after?” he asks. “I mean, after we get our memories back for real.”</p>
<p>Eddie stops placing his carefully bundled socks. “What do you mean?”</p>
<p>“For you . . .  and me,” Richie says. He feels so afraid to ask, but if they’re hurtling off into the unknown he might as well hurtle all the way. “Like, you’ll be here, and I’ll be in Chicago, and that’s gonna fucking suck.”</p>
<p>“We’ll figure it out,” Eddie says. He hesitates for a moment. “I could . . . I could come to Chicago?” he says tentatively. “Go back with you, I mean. Because I fucking hate it here, I hate U of Maine and I hate studying business and I hate being so close to my mom and I think things would be better if I was with you.” He’s gathered a fair amount of steam at the end, before he comes to an abrupt stop.</p>
<p>Richie is stunned. Here’s the thing he’d just learned he wants more desperately than anything in the world and it’s being offered up to him. He wonders for a second if he never stopped tripping, if he’s lying in his bed and this is actually some kind of extended hallucination. </p>
<p>But he looks at Eddie and knows his mind couldn’t come up with that much detail. He never would have thought up someone so wonderful as Edward Kaspbark, not if he had a thousand life times to think it over.</p>
<p>He realizes he’s been quiet for too long when Eddie begins to shuffle awkwardly. “Sorry, that was a stupid idea,” he says, “I know that’s kinda an intense suggestion, I just don’t know what else to do to make sure my life isn’t like the was it was before you showed up.”</p>
<p>“No, you should totally come,” Richie says quickly. “I need someone to admire and cheer for all the cool shit I do. I’m gonna get a skateboard and learn how to ollie and you’re gonna watch from the sidelines.”</p>
<p>“If you get a skateboard you’ll crack your head open,” Eddie says. </p>
<p>“And you’ll patch me up,” Richie says. “Just like you always did. How could I not have had a crush on cute little Doctor K, with your bandaids and your neosporin and your adorable fanny pack?”</p>
<p>“You constantly looked like you’d fallen down a hill,” Eddie says, shuffling the last of his clothes into his bag. “If I didn’t take care of you you would have gotten dirt into a wound and developed an infection.”</p>
<p>“Maybe I was a little reckless so you’d yell at me and pay attention to me, so sue me.” Richie feels giddy, everything pouring out of his mouth that’s been burbling within him for the last week knowingly, and the past ten years subconsciously. </p>
<p>“Yeah, well, I’d pout whenever you weren’t paying attention to me, so we’re pretty much even.” Eddie slings his bag over his shoulder. “Do you know how far it is?” He asks.</p>
<p>“No idea,” Richie responds. “So let’s just start driving.”</p>
<p>Eddie heads towards the door, then takes a deep breath. He turns to face Richie. “We can do this, right?” he says. “We can fix this shit?”</p>
<p>Richie looks at Eddie and hopes. He hopes for a future they can have, not just the two of them, but all these people they didn’t mean to forget. He imagines Eddie coming back to Chicago with him and moving into his apartment, and getting back all the time they lost. He thinks Eddie might not fully understand what they’re facing, because he didn’t see what Richie saw on acid. And Richie’s terrified. He’s terrified of whatever’s awaiting him in Derry. But all of it will be worth it, every bit will be worth it, if he gets to keep Eddie in his life.</p>
<p>So ne nods his head and says, “Yeah, we can fucking do this Spaghetti. Let’s go fuck that town up.”</p>
<p>Eddie opens the door and they step out towards what comes next.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And it's done! Thanks so much to everyone who's read and commented.</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Parts of this are like a real acid trip and parts are enhanced for plot purposes. </p><p>The Bowie line is actually 'a solider with a broken arm' but I heard it wrong the first time I listened to the song, and I imagined Richie might too. </p><p>Come talk to me on twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/beepbeepbxtch">@beepbeepbxtch</a> and tumblr at <a href="https://toziertool.tumblr.com/">toziertool</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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